


Seven Days

by AutisticWriter



Series: Seven Days [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Arguing, Aromantic Monkey D. Luffy, Autism, Autism Spectrum, Autistic Monkey D. Luffy, Autistic Roronoa Zoro, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Broken Bones, Complete, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cutting, Dark, Death Threats, Dehydration, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Exhaustion, Fear, Force-Feeding, Forced Eye Contact, Friendship, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Hugs, Humiliation, Major Character Injury, Making Up, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Non-Consensual Bondage, Panic Attacks, Physical Abuse, Post-Arlong Park Arc (One Piece), Psychological Torture, Queerplatonic Relationships, Rated For Violence, Rescue, Restraints, Revenge, Roronoa Zoro-centric, Self-Harm, Sensory Overload, Sleep Deprivation, Stabbing, Starvation, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing, Torture, Trauma, Triggers, Violence, Vomiting, Waterboarding, Wetting, Whump, Wordcount: 30.000-50.000, Worry, meltdowns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-03-06 01:18:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18840682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutisticWriter/pseuds/AutisticWriter
Summary: On Tuesday, only a few days after leaving Cocoyashi village, the Straw Hats are ambushed and knocked out with a sleeping gas. When they wake up, they find Zoro has vanished.On Monday, they find him, bloody and beaten.But during those seven days, all the five Straw Hats know is pain and fear.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A very dark story full of torture, whump and angst. May be triggering, so please read the tags.
> 
>  
> 
> Anti-shippers don't interact.

Zoro lies on the deck of the Going Merry, hands tucked behind his head, and stares up at the clouds that drift across the sky. The ship rocks beneath him, the action rather soothing. His single sword rests beside his hip, scratched from his fight against Arlong’s Pirates, and he longs for a trip to a store that sells swords so he can get replacements for his two other swords, damaged beyond repair. After all, how can he do his Three Sword Style with just one sword?

Fatigue takes him over, partly from a shoddy night’s sleep (thanks to Luffy and Usopp kicking him in his sleep) but mainly from recovering from his injuries, which, according to Nami, need to heal fully before he can start training again. He would have argued, but nobody sensible argues with Nami. He wants to sleep – he needs to sleep – but there is one slight problem.

“Shut up, Luffy!” he yells.

Luffy won’t shut up. His ever hyperactive captain won’t stop rambling about everything that happened to them in Cocoyashi Village, the main topic of his babbling being how glad he is to have Nami back. Of course, when Zoro first heard him say all of that, he smiled (and Usopp giggled when Nami blushed), but that was several hours ago. Is Luffy incapable of shutting up, or what?

Across the deck, Luffy looks up. He’s sat on the railing near Usopp and Nami, swinging his legs.

“Huh?” Luffy says, jumping down and wandering over. “What’s up, Zoro?”

He rolls his eyes. “Did you not hear what I said?”

Luffy shrugs his shoulders. “I heard yelling. But you yell a lot, so…”

Usopp laughs and Nami nudges him.

“Anyway,” Zoro says. “Can you shut it for a few minutes? I’m trying to sleep.”

“Oh, okay,” Luffy says.

He manages to keep the noise down for a few minutes, giving Zoro plenty of time to drift off into well-needed sleep.

\---

Not too far away from where the Going Merry drifts, another ship bobs in the calm water. A much smaller vessel that has clearly seen better days, the ship flies a pirate flag, and three men huddle around something on the deck.

“So, you both know what we need to do?” the first pirate says.

The second pirate rolls his eyes. “Of course we fucking do, boss. We’ve been talking nonstop for weeks about this.”

Without speaking, the first pirate delivers a hard smack to the back of his head, sending him stumbling.

The third pirate goes to laugh, but stops himself, not wanting to be hit. “Yeah, we both know.”

“Good,” their leader says, smirking. “You better not mess this up. We need this. We need our revenge.”

\---

When Usopp turns his head to look out to sea, his eyes focus on something. A ship, a bit smaller than their own and bearing signs of recent damage, sails in their direction.

“Hey, guys, there’s a ship coming our way,” he says, squinting to get a better look. “Oh, it’s a pirate ship.”

“Cool,” Luffy says, grinning. “I love seeing other pirates.”

“You do remember how many of our enemies are also pirates?” Sanji mutters, but he doesn’t get a response.

Usopp leans against the railings, studying the ship. “I think they’re heading straight for us.”

“Have you made any more enemies, Luffy?” Nami asks.

“Hey!” Luffy cries, puffing his cheeks out. “Not everyone I meet becomes my enemy.”

“It’s still gotta be a good fifty percent, though,” Zoro mumbles, yawning. “Will they want a fight, or just pass us? Wanna take a bet, anyone?”

Sanji grins, exhaling a plume of smoke. “Yeah, I want some of that action. I bet you five hundred berries they’re pissed off with Luffy and want a fight.”

Zoro smirks back, holding out his hand and giving Sanji a firm handshake. “Deal.”

“You guys are so mean!” Luffy says, pouting.

Nami chuckles weakly, joining Usopp at the railings and studying the approaching ship. “If they’re not here to fight, I wonder what they want.”

“I dunno,” Usopp says, shrugging his shoulders. “I just hope they leave us alone. There’s been too much fighting recently.”

Nami’s hand goes to her upper arm, skin still sensitive under her touch. “You’re right there.”

The ship draws closer still, and soon everyone on board finds themselves watching, curious as to the intentions of the pirates.

When the ship gets close enough that the Straw Hats can see three people stood on the deck, the ship makes a sharp turn to port.

“Huh?” Luffy says, watching the ship turn so the side of it faces the Merry. “What are they doing?”

Usopp’s eyes focus on the canon mounted to the ship, and his stomach flips. “Oh crap.”

“They’re going to fire at us!” Nami says.

“Shit,” Sanji mutters. “Luffy, do your thing!”

“I thought I was the captain around here,” Luffy says, but he jumps onto the railing, preparing to catch the cannon ball with his Devil Fruit powers and send it flying back towards the other ship.

However, Luffy doesn’t get a chance to use this skill. Despite the canon being pointed straight at the Going Merry, none of the men on deck move to light it. Both groups of pirates stare at each other, the Straw Hats puzzled and the strangers smirking.

“What do you want!?” Luffy calls, cupping his hands around his mouth to make his already loud voice even noisier.

They get no reply. The men clearly heard Luffy (Zoro recons everyone in the fucking East Blue heard him), but they don’t react.

At least, until one of the men reaches into his bag and pulls out a slingshot.

“Hey, he’s got one too!” Usopp cries, his fascination of slingshots overriding his fear in that moment.

This slingshot is not exactly like Usopp’s, however; it is much larger, clearly capable of firing much larger ammunition. But it’s a weapon nonetheless.

“What the hell are they up to?” Sanji mutters, putting out his cigarette but putting an unlit one straight in his mouth.

Nobody takes their eyes from the slingshot, waiting for the man to make a move. After several minutes, the standoff is still going, and most of the Straw Hats find themselves bored rather than worried.

“Well, this is a letdown,” Luffy says, yawning. “Let’s get moving.”

But the moment Luffy takes a step towards the ship’s wheel, the pirate pulls a white ball from his bag, loads it into his slingshot, and fires.

“What the fuck?!” Sanji yells.

The ball lands on the deck near Nami’s feet and, after a single second, it explodes. Thick, white gas pours from it, covering the deck of the ship in fumes. Nami inhales and her lungs burn, an agonising cough escaping her throat. All she can see is the gas, her chest burning and her vision flickering.

Nami passes out before she hits the deck, totally unresponsive.

“Nami!” Luffy cries, rushing straight towards her. Just as with Nami, a lungful of the smoke is enough to knock Luffy out, sending him crashing to the deck.

“Seriously, what is this stuff?” Usopp says, covering his mouth with both hands.

“Poison gas, you idiot,” Zoro says, taking a step backwards. “Probably knock us out for a few hours so they can rob us.”

“Or fucking kill us,” Sanji mutters.

The three of the look at each other and the encroaching cloud of gas, trying to think of a plan so they don’t get knocked out and the whole ship left defenceless.

But the gas proves much more potent than they had expected, and the cloud envelops them before they have a chance to do anything. They fight the urge to breathe, but first Usopp, then Sanji and finally Zoro each give in, inhaling before they suffocate themselves. And, just as they feared, the gas burns their lungs and makes them horribly drowsy…

Zoro’s eyes drift shut and he falls to the deck, smacking his head against the wood, before giving in to unconsciousness.

\---

Luffy awakes slowly, and lets out a groan when pain shoots through his head. He forces himself to sit up, his limbs weak and heavy, and he blinks, trying to get his vision back into focus.

“Luffy! I’m so glad you’re awake!” Nami cries.

She kneels beside him, a nasty bruise forming on her chin. When he looks at her, she pulls him into a hug.

“Nami… what happened?” he mumbles, still half asleep.

“Don’t you remember the gas?” she says, and his memories come back.

He remembers everything up until the moment he passed out from the gas. But how long ago was that? And are the others okay?

The others!

“Nami, where are Zoro and Usopp and Sanji!?” he cries, grabbing her shoulders and shaking a bit too hard.

“Stop doing that.”

“Sorry.”

Nami lets out a shaky breath. “Look, Usopp and Sanji are over there. They haven’t woken up yet. But—“

He cuts Nami off before she can finish, hurtling across the deck on wobbly legs. He finds Sanji and Usopp sprawled on the deck, both still unconscious.

He spins back around, a brief bout of vertigo making him stumble, and stares at Nami. “Where’s Zoro?!”

“I was about to say that,” Nami says, walking over and putting her hand on his arm. “Look, Luffy, try not to freak out…”

“What happened?! Where is he?!” Luffy cries, well aware he’s freaking out but how can you not freak out when someone starts a sentence like that? “Nami!”

She sighs, looking out to sea, where that pirate ship is nowhere to be found.

“Luffy, he’s… gone.”

Something twists deep in his stomach, his heart pounding so fast he feels like his ribcage might explode. “What?! What do you mean?! Nami! I don’t understand…”

Nami pulls him into a hug, rubbing his back. “I mean what I said. When I woke up, he wasn’t here. He’s not anywhere on the ship. He’s gone.”

“What…? But… Zoro…”

Where is he?

What happened to him?

“Nami,” he says, fighting back the tears that sting his eyes. “We have to find him.”

\---

When Zoro awakes, his sense of smell is the first to appear. A disgusting, unfamiliar scent of damp wafts up his nose, and he would grimace if he remembered how to move. This doesn’t smell like the Merry. Just where is he?

His other senses return gradually, but he doesn’t open his heavy eyelids, leaving him without his vision. Cold, damp stone presses against his legs and back, and metal cuffs clasp each of his wrists and ankles.

Finally, Zoro manages to open his eyes, and his groggy mind focuses. Yes, this is nothing like the Merry.

He sits in the corner of a small, dingy room, dark except for a bit of light that shines through a tiny window. The walls and floor are all made of damp stone, a rotten wooden door a few feet away from him. Just as he thought, thick metal cuffs encircle his wrists and ankles, tight enough to make his skin ache. Chains lead off of the cuffs and are connected to metal loops sticking out of the walls. In this position, he could stand up and walk a few steps before being restricted further by the lax chains.

But he can’t move, his limbs heavy and aching like he ran a marathon. His head throbs, his eyes ache, and his lungs burn in a way that makes him feel like he is getting sick.

And then the memories come back. Memories of the gas.

Just what happened to him after he passed out? And where are the others? Are they safe? What is going on?

Even though he would rather curl up in a ball and sleep, Zoro has to find a way out of here. First, he needs to see who the fuck his captors are. He suspects the pirates who gassed them, but he can’t be certain.

“Hey! Is anybody there!?” he yells, his voice coming out croakier than he would have liked. “Show yourselves!”

For several long, long seconds, all Zoro can hear are drips of water hitting the puddles on the ground and his own heartbeat in his ears. But, finally, footsteps echo somewhere outside his cell. The footsteps grow louder, and a key creaks in the rusty lock. And then the door swings open, and they stand there.

The three pirates who gassed his crew stand there, staring down at Zoro with disturbing smirks on their faces.

“Well, look who’s awake,” the first captor says, walking towards Zoro.

“Piss off,” Zoro mutters.

“Ooh, he’s a feisty one,” the second captor says, giving Zoro a hard kick in the chest.

Zoro doesn’t give the guy the pleasure of wincing, simply glaring at him as yet more pain flares through his burning chest.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” he says, trying to catch his breath.

Without answering him, the second and third men nod at the first (clearly the leader) and walk to the other corners of the room. Wheels are set into the floor, chains wrapped around them – the same chains fastened to Zoro’s cuffs.

“Winch him up, men,” the leader says, grinning.

To Zoro’s confusion, the pair begin to turn the wheels, creating a horrific squeaking sound, and the slack on the chains lessens. Eventually, it goes taut, and pressure builds up in Zoro’s arms. They keep pulling the chains, pain flaring up Zoro’s arms until his elbows and shoulders seem about to dislocate, and he grits his jaw to keep from groaning.

The leader walks over, and laughs. “Unless you want your arms ripped off, stand up. Now.”

Even though his limbs still won’t coordinate well, Zoro has no choice. As his shoulders stretch in ways he never knew were possible, his shoes scuffle again the damp ground, trying to get a footing. Finally, the pain becomes too much when a ligament starts to tear in his shoulder, and Zoro hisses. As the pirates laugh, he manages to get his feet flat and pushes up, lifting his body off of the ground.

Straightening his weak, aching body, Zoro finds the pain in his arms reducing, until his shoulders no longer threaten to dislocate. His legs wobble beneath him, but he can’t sit down without ripping his arms out of their sockets.

“Excellent job,” the leader says, watching Zoro pant for breath.

Zoro glares at them. “So, are you fucking bastards gonna tell me why I’m here, or—”

In a swift movement, the leader pulls a small knife from his pocket and plunges the blade into Zoro’s thigh. Despite his best efforts, he lets out a cry of pain, so overwhelmed with agony he doesn’t know how else to react.

The captor laughs and pulls out the blade, creating another groan and sending blood oozing from the thin but deep gash in Zoro’s leg.

“That’s what you get for disrespecting me,” the leader says, and he leans close to Zoro, holding the bloody knife. “But if you really wanna know…

“This, Roronoa Zoro, is revenge for what you did to our brother.”


	2. Chapter 2

When Sanji wakes up, the first thing he hears are heavy footsteps stomping around on the deck. The action sends vibrations through his aching head and he grits his jaw to suppress a moan. Wait… why does his head ache again?

He opens his eyes (eyelids heavy like Luffy has woken him in the middle of the night again), and finds himself lying on his side in a very weird position, a hand tucked under his face and his leg stuck out at a right-angle, knee parallel to his hip. It doesn’t hurt, but he can hardly call this comfortable. Sanji slowly raises himself into a sitting position, this time letting out a groan and pressing the heels of his hands against his aching eyes in the hope it might help his headache. It doesn’t.

Blinking, Sanji turns his head, finally making sense of his surroundings. Usopp lies beside him in the same position, unconscious and making hissing noises when he breathes. His friend’s wheezy breathing brings back the memories of inhaling that horrible gas, and Sanji presses a hand to his chest, realising he is wheezing too, his chest aching.

Of course; the gas! How did it take him this long to remember? Those pirates fired a grenade of some sort onto the deck, it exploded and knocked each of them out when they inhaled too much of the stuff.

Even though his legs ache like someone fastened heavy weights around his ankles, Sanji lurches to his feet and turns around, blinking when vertigo makes his vision shift. He looks across the deck, past the tangerine trees, and finds the source of the stomping: Luffy.

Furious and clearly upset, Luffy paces back and forth with heavy, clomping footfalls and arms flailing around in a very familiar way. Oh yeah; Luffy always flaps his arms around, fingers splayed, when he gets stressed out. Is he upset because of the gas?

Sanji wanders over, spotting Nami stood near to Luffy, and his heart breaks when he sees her red, swollen eyes. Nami has been crying.

“Nami!” he calls, darting over (and totally not tripping over his feet and almost falling). “What’s the matter, my darling?”

“What d’you mean ‘what’s the matter?’” Luffy cries, storming over and grabbing Sanji by the shoulders. “How can you not see what’s wrong with her?!”

“Luffy, get off of him,” Nami says, putting an arm on Luffy’s waist and tugging until he takes the hint and steps backwards, hands flapping again. “Sorry, Sanji. We’re just really stressed out right now.”

He smiles at her, despite not feeling like it. “Are you upset about the gas?”

“Fuck the gas!” Luffy snaps, his eyes shining with tears. Is Luffy about to cry?

“You know, I’d really appreciate being told what the fuck is going on,” Sanji says, taking out his pack of cigarettes. His fingers fumble as he tries to take one out, almost dropping it before finally getting it into his mouth. He wants to yell back at Luffy, but keeps his voice low and passive aggressive. “You may not realise this, Luffy, but if nobody tells me, I can’t know what’s upset you both.”

Luffy either doesn’t notice his tone or just ignores it, because he simply coughs, wheezing like the rest of them, and bows his head, hat slipping forwards. “Nami,” he whispers, weak and more pathetic than Sanji has ever heard him sound. “You… tell him.”

“Tell me what?” Sanji says, eyes on Nami as she nods at Luffy before turning to face him.

“Uh, when we woke up… we realised Zoro is gone.”

His eyes widen, the pain in his head blaring like an alarm. “What?!”

Nami sighs, and Sanji longs to hug her (but doesn’t). “He… disappeared. He’s gone.”

Luffy screws his hands into fists, trembling.

“He’s gone?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

“Oh fuck,” is all Sanji can think to say. How can Zoro, his crewmate, his bickering partner, his friend, be… gone?

“But!” Luffy blurts, straightening up so Sanji can see his face again. Tears brim in his eyes, his bottom lip trembling with the effort of holding them back, but his mouth is set into a determined grin. “But we’re gonna find him! Right, Nami?”

“Right,” she says, nodding (and as Sanji studies her, he can tell Nami doubts this, not that she would tell Luffy; to be honest, he isn’t certain they can find him, but he knows they need to stay positive). “We’re gonna find him.”

Luffy laughs – before noticing Usopp starting to wake up and hurtling over to see his partner.

\---

“This, Roronoa Zoro, is revenge for what you did to our brother.”

Those words seem to echo around the small, disgusting cell. Zoro stares at the leader of his three captors, confused by the overwhelming anger that radiates from him. Have he and these men even met before?

The leader pulls back, looking down at Zoro’s leg. Blood still oozes from the stab wound, his pants drenched in blood all the way down to his knee, where it starts to dry. Pain still radiates from the wound, but Zoro no longer feels like he might throw up.

“What?” he says, frowning.

All three pirates look at each other, horrified grimaces forming on their faces.

“What the fuck!?” the second captor yells, storming over and punching Zoro across the face. His knuckles collide with Zoro’s nose, something crunching inside his skull, and blood starts dribbling out of his nostrils. And, thanks to the sovereign ring he wears on his finger, the sharp piece of metal gouges a gash across his nose and cheek, sending blood spilling down his face. When the bastard pulls back, blood shines on his ring and he grins sadistically. “You fucking bastard! Do you not even remember?!”

Hot blood oozes down his face, coating his lips and dripping off of his chin. A bit trickles into his mouth, and Zoro tries not to grimace at the foul, metallic taste. He wants to spit, but with the leader this close, he might end up spitting bloody saliva all over the bastard, and getting stabbed again isn’t a good idea. So he swallows it, the nausea coming back.

“He really doesn’t!” the third man cries, slapping himself on the forehead and dragging his hand down his face. “Have you killed so many pirates you can’t even remember them, Roronoa?”

To be honest, they are correct. During his career as a pirate hunter, Zoro defeated so many pirates that only a few stand out in his memory as important adversaries. If he killed their brother (and he’s not sure if they mean brother as in their blood relative or a friend), he certainly has no memory of it. But to say that would be suicidal with them this pissed with him.

Zoro blinks, his headache from the gas back with a vengeance as pain throbs in his nose (probably broken) and the gash on his face. He probably has a concussion, not that he has any way to treat it.

“Uh…” How should he answer?

The leader drops to his knees, staring in fascination at Zoro’s bleeding leg. “Let’s take that as a yes, boys. Okay, Roronoa, I know I spoke about revenge, but I wasn’t really clear, was I?” Zoro doesn’t reply, but he carries on speaking like he did. “Yeah, probably need to explain what this is all about.”

The second captor walks over, staring at Zoro’s knees, which wobble as he tries to keep himself standing, not wanting to fall and dislocate his shoulders. He laughs, like watching this is some kind of fucking comedy show. “We want to make you suffer.”

“We want to hurt you, just like you hurt Kenjirou,” the third man says, and Zoro catches the sadness in his voice. “No, even worse than what you did to our brother.”

Grinning, the leader takes out his knife, the blood on the blade now congealing, and leans closer to Zoro’s wound.

“What are you doing?” he says, more confused than scared by whatever the fuck they have planned.

The leader chooses to ignore him, and jabs his finger into the wound.

Zoro gasps, more blood spilling from the wound, the edges of the gash tearing and making it even bigger. “What the f-fuck!?”

With a degree of fascination unlike anything Zoro has seen before, the captor pulls his finger from the cut, skin shining with fresh blood. As Zoro shudders for breath, the man peels bloody, torn fabric away from the edges of the wound, exposing the gash and sending yet more blood oozing from it. Zoro grits his jaw, shuddering for breath, wanting to kick but knowing he can barely move his legs. With one hand, the pirate puts his thumb and finger on the edges of the gash and pulls them apart, exposing layers of skin and fat in amongst all the blood.

And, with the other hand, he readies his knife and shoves the blade back in. grunting with pain, Zoro screws up his eyes, longing for the pain to end. The knife pushes in as deep as it can possibly go, through fat and muscle and when the area starts to feel a bit numb rather than even more painful, Zoro figures a nerve must have been cut too. The end of the blade scratches against his femur, and he finally screams, bloody saliva dribbling down his chin.

“Perfect,” the second man says, grinning.

And just when Zoro starts to cope with the pain, the blade twists sharply, gouging through his leg, and pulls out, smothered in blood.

Blood cascades down Zoro’s leg, dark red blood that leaks out of the wound in a seemingly never ending stream. As he gasps for breath, something occurs to him: will he bleed to death?

“If you’re wondering if you’re gonna bleed out,” the leader says like he can fucking read minds. “No, you’re not. I used to be a ship’s medic, and I chose an area where I wouldn’t hit an artery. You’re gonna lose a shit ton of blood, don’t get me wrong, but you won’t die. Trust me.”

“Wh-Why would I… trust you?” Zoro says, panting for breath. He’s getting lightheaded, probably from the blood loss, and he hangs his head, close to passing out.

The pirate laughs and grabs Zoro by the chin, jerking his head up so they ar almost face to face. “Look at me, Roronoa.”

Zoro stares at his face with half-open eyes, still wondering if he’s going to puke.

“No, look at my eyes,” the bastard says, holding the knife to Zoro’s neck and baring his teeth in a way that makes him look like a wolf. “Look at me!”

Eye contact hurts in ways Zoro can’t really explain; it just feels like someone is pressing on his eyes, pressure building up in his head until he has a meltdown from the pain. He never makes eye contact (neither does Luffy, for that matter), and nobody cared. Until now.

Not wanting to get his throat slit (or reveal his autism, lest these bastards trigger his sensory issues deliberately as part of this torture), Zoro reluctantly flickers his eyes to lock them with the pirate’s, biting his lip to fight back the discomfort building up behind his forehead.

“Good,” the leader says, his stare seeming to look right inside Zoro’s head. “Right, so, you should trust me because… I don’t want you to die. I want to keep you alive. I want you to suffer. So, no, I won’t let you die, and you can take my word on that. Although… don’t expect me to just let you go when all this is over. Do you understand?”

Even though he feels like shit and he can’t process much with the forced eye contact, Zoro nods. “Yeah. I get it.”

\---

He can’t cope with this. How could anyone expect him to cope with this?

Usopp hunches in on himself, trembling, fighting back tears and kind of wanting to throw up. He doesn’t look at his crewmates. Maybe if he doesn’t look at them, they’ll tell him it’s some kind of sick joke, that Zoro isn’t really…

Ever since he awoke, he’s felt on the verge of a panic attack. His lungs ache from the gas, his head hurts from slamming it onto the deck when he collapsed, and his eyes sting with the effort of holding the tears back.

And it’s not like anyone is any better: Luffy is on the verge of a meltdown, Sanji is chain smoking, and Nami has taken to cleaning, obviously in need of something to do. And Usopp just sits there, freaking out.

When he woke up and started freaking out, Luffy hugged him a bit too hard and, in a voice that was a bit too firm, said, “We’ll find him.” And that level of amazing determination managed to keep Usopp from crying, but… it’s not enough. He knows Luffy wants to be optimistic, but… Zoro could be anywhere.

They might never find him.

“Well,” Nami says, dropping her mop and picking up a chest full of her detailed maps. She carries it to the table and drops it down, making Sanji jump. “We need to start somewhere, right?”

“Right!” Luffy cries, running on nervous energy. “Let’s work out a plan.”

Usopp isn’t stupid. He knows Nami and Sanji feel the way he does (and maybe Luffy does too, deep down), but they can’t show it. They have to be optimistic. They just have to. So even though he still needs to cry, he grins and nods too hard.

Nami rummages through the chest and pulls out a map of the area of the East Blue they’re in right now, her focus totally on the drawing beneath her fingers and the islands plotted on it. Nami always looks so content when she studies a map, even if it’s only a façade that will break the moment she looks up.

As Nami pours over the map, Sanji picks up the empty grenade and turns it over in his hands. Usopp leans closer to get a better look, staring at the two pieces of plastic, split in half from the explosion, that used to form the ball of gas that was tossed towards them.

“Do you… recognise it?” he whispers, staring at Sanji and the weirdly intense expression on his face.

“I don’t know,” Sanji say, tracing his fingers across the smooth surface. “I – hang on, wait a minute!”

“What, what?!” Luffy cries, darting over.

“I dunno, don’t think I’ve solved this or anything, it’s just…”

“What is it, Sanji?” Usopp asks, and Nami looks up.

“It’s so hard to think after having that shit mess up my body,” Sanji says, pressing a hand to his forehead. “But… but before I joined you lot… I heard this rumour about a group of pirates who’d made this really potent sleeping gas, and how they’d worked out how to make it into grenades. It’s just a long shot, but—”

“You mean, if we can find the people who made this thing, that might lead us to the bastards who took Zoro?” Usopp asks, using a swearword for once.

Sanji shrugs. “Again, a long shot. We might not find them, or the guys who made them might not be who we’re looking for, or—”

“No, we should look for them!” Luffy yells.

“Stop cutting me off!” Sanji says, giving both Luffy and Usopp obscene hand gestures.

“Seriously, it’s worth a try,” Nami says. “Look, it’s a huge gamble and I don’t even know where we should start, but… let’s try this.”

“Yeah!” Luffy cries, hugging her.

And Usopp turns to look out to sea, the tears finally spilling over.


	3. Chapter 3

Blood pours from the wound on his leg, running across his already blood-soaked clothes and dripping onto his feet. After ten minutes of standing here and trying to breathe through the pain and blood loss, blood actually starts to drip onto the floor and make a puddle around his foot.

Zoro groans, trying to stay calm but not sure how. He has experienced pain like this before, but at least then he got to lie down and people tried to give him first aid. Right now, he loses a ridiculous amount of blood whilst being forced to stay on his unsteady, aching legs, whilst the bastards who did this to him have fucked off and are probably enjoying themselves right now. Fuck this. Fuck all of them.

It’s ten minutes since the leader of their little gang stabbed him up to the hilt of the knife, and Zoro realises the fucking idiot may have miscalculated his ability to stab someone without causing deadly blood loss. At this rate, he’s surely going to bleed out in less than an hour. Now, Zoro knows nothing about medicine, but that seems like a fuck up to him. is it bad he’s actually kind of pleased he might die of this just to spite the asshole who went on and on about how he knows how to stab someone ‘safely’?

He leans his head back, the wet stone wall cold behind him and making his hair damp, and lets out a long, slow breath. Seriously, what a fucked up way to go. His heart rate picks up, his heart drumming inside his chest as it attempts to keep his blood circulating. Somehow, his headache gets worse, and Zoro screws his eyes up.

The hideous creaking of the old door opening signals the arrival of one of his captors, and Zoro grits his jaw as the noise burns his ears. But he refuses to open his eyes.

Footsteps approach him, before stopping. “Uh, Boss!?” the third man yells, again causing Zoro’s ears to burn. “Come here a minute!”

More footsteps, these louder, and the voice of their leader echoes around the cell. “What the fuck do you want – shit!”

“See.”

“Oh shut up.”

“He’s all clammy. Is… he gonna die, Boss?”

The leader scoffs, letting out a patronising laugh. “Of course not, you fucking idiot. Look, I’ll prove he’s fine.”

He steps right up to Zoro, and snaps his fingers right in front of Zoro’s face. “Open your eyes, Roronoa.”

Zoro wants to ignore him, to tell the bastard to go fuck himself, but, well… the only way he’ll survive this injury is being compliant. Fighting back a sigh, he opens his eyes, and forces himself into more forced eye contact with the man who stabbed him.

“See, he’s still responding,” the leader says. He drops to one knee, getting his pants soaked in Zoro’s blood but not seeming to care, and puts his face right in front of Zoro’s gaping wound. “Yeah… I think I fucked up.”

“Huh, Boss?”

“I thought it’d stop, but he’ll bleed out at this rate.”

The other pirate frowns, before obviously remembering they don’t want Zoro to die (at least not yet). “Oh yeah. so… what do we do?”

Sighing, the leader grabs him by the back of the neck and hauls him out of the cell. As they walk away, Zoro hears the words “first aid” but knows they’re just going to use it as an excuse to hurt him even more.

\---

Even though his overwhelming fear has left him trembling and kind of nearing a meltdown, Luffy forces a big grin onto his face and jumps onto a chair to make himself the tallest. He puts his hands on his hips and looks at his crew, wanting to cry when he sees the fear and sadness and panic, but not letting himself.

“Okay, guys, we need to actually do something about this!” he says, his firm tone ruined by the slight tremor in his voice. “We need to find the guys who made these grenades, but where do we actually start? The East Blue’s a huge place, you know?”

“If they’re even in the East Blue,” Sanji mutters.

“Not helpful, Sanji,” Nami says.

“Anyway, so… any ideas?” Luffy says, voice cracking on his final word.

“W-Well, they could be anywhere,” Usopp says, sniffing and scrubbing at his face with a tissue. “But, but if we’re going with the assumption the guys who t-took Zoro and the guys who made the grenades are the same, uh, well… it’s been less than a day. They can’t have gone that far.”

“Hey, you’re right!” Nami says, putting her arm around Usopp and pulling him close. “Hang on, let me get my map…”

Nami goes to retrieve the map she left on the table, but Sanji holds out a hand, stopping her.

“No, allow me,” he says, darting across the deck and returning with Nami’s map of their current location, handing it to her with a bow.

“Oh, uh, thanks,” she says, a bit confused. Shaking her head (and then grimacing; does Nami still have a headache too?), Nami drops to her knees and spreads the map out across the deck. “Can I have a pen?”

“Of course, my darling,” Sanji says, always happy to do whatever Nami wants (which Luffy finds funny – or at least he would in literally any other situation). Luffy hears him rummaging through the box Nami keeps her cartography supplies in, and he hurries back with a fountain pen in his hand.

“Thank you,” Nami says, leaning right over her map.

Luffy steps down from the chair, mindful not to make Nami jump (she gets seriously pissed if you jog her when she’s doing anything related to maps), and he, Usopp and Sanji sit on the deck, fanning out so the four of them sit in a circle, the map in the middle. Determined to keep silent, Luffy watches Nami locate ports on her map, and mark them with small Xs.

When she’s done, Nami sits up and looks at them all. “Okay, so I’ve left out some places that are way too far away, but these are all the ports they might have chosen to head towards.”

Usopp studies the map, and sighs. “There’s loads of them.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t exactly narrow things down, does it?” Nami says, giving a weak smile.

“No, it’s still really helpful,” Luffy says, grinning. “We can just… search them all.”

“That’s not exactly a good plan, Luffy,” Sanji says, lighting another cigarette.

Luffy grits his jaw, wanting to give some big, passionate speech but unable to find the words. He wants to save Zoro. He needs to save Zoro. He knows this seems hopeless but they have to try. They need to get him back.

When a hand touches his back, Luffy flinches. Turning his head, he finds Usopp smiling with tears in his eyes, his hand rubbing Luffy’s back. He sniffs and hugs Luffy like he can’t let go, close to sobbing again but managing to hold the tears back.

“You’re right, it’s a crappy plan,” Usopp says, his voice weak but firm. “But it’s the only plan we’ve got. And… and even if it takes us months or years, we’re gonna find him, right?”

Luffy grins, putting his hand on the back of Usopp’s neck and wriggling in the awkward hug until they face each other. “Yeah,” he says, letting Usopp press his face against Luffy’s shoulder. “We’re gonna find him.”

He looks at Sanji and Nami, who cast aside their confusion and doubt and the fact this is a really shit plan but, yeah, it’s the only one they’ve got, and they nod.

They’re going to find him.

\---

After five minutes of having to listen to these fucking assholes bickering, Zoro finally sees one of his captors take out a (rather grubby) strip of fabric and approach him. Are they actually going to do it now, or let him bleed out whilst they argue about whose bed sheets back on their ship they needed to destroy to make their makeshift bandage for their prisoner?

The leader snatches the fabric from one of his men, and storms towards Zoro. “Right, we’re actually fucking doing this now. You’ll probably get an infection from this bandage, but I don’t care.” He gets to his knees and places the long, thin strip of fabric against Zoro’s wound. The blood soaks through it instantly. “Fucking hell.”

“Maybe is you hadn’t stabbed him in the wrong place, Boss, then this—”

“Shut the fuck up!” the leader yells, pulling the bloodstained knife from his pocket and lobbing it towards the man who just spoke. It misses him, clattering to the ground, but not by much.

The two pirates gasp for breath, taking a step back from their leader. Are they only now realising just how fucked up this guy is?”

Gritting his teeth, the leader wraps the fabric around and around Zoro’s leg, putting so much pressure on the wound he can’t help but make a grunt of pain. He keeps wrapping it, so tight it hurts even more, before tying a clumsy knot and stepping backwards to look at his work.

Zoro looks down, eyes focusing on the messy bandage around his thigh, the edges of the off-white fabric already getting stained red by his blood-soaked clothes. He doesn’t know much about first aid, but even he knows this bandage is on too tight, and might affect circulation to his left. But given a choice between bleeding to death or having the bandage on, he’ll pick the bandage.

The leader stands up, wiping his bloody hands on his pant legs. The three pirates stare at Zoro, studying his bandaged leg with contempt. Still, they seem satisfied that their prisoner isn’t going to bleed out, those sadistic grins back on their faces.

“So,” the leader says. “Are you going to thank me?”

Zoro stares at him, eyes wide. “What?”

“Well, I just saved your life, didn’t I? Thank me.”

“No,” Zoro says. He understands the need to suck up to people who hold massive amounts of power over you, but this is too much. He was only bleeding because this bastard stabbed him!

Glaring at Zoro, the leader grabs his jaw, squeezing hard enough to leave bruises. “Excuse me? Thank me, you piece of shit, or I’ll hurt you again.”

“You… already said you’re gonna keep hurting me. So I’ll still get hurt whatever I say. So… I’m not saying it. Die mad about it.”

“You fucking piece of shit!” he yells, stalking out of the cell.

The other two pirates laugh, wandering over to Zoro.

“You know, the Boss was gonna call it a day for your torture,” the second man says, picking up the knife that was thrown at him. “But he’ll be back and he’ll do something to you, all because you mouthed off.”

Zoro glares at the pair of them, but the anxious knot in his stomach just got bigger. Okay, so that was probably a really, really stupid idea.

\---

A few minutes after he stormed out of the cell in a fucking mood, the leader of the captors returns, holding something behind his back. He smiles at Zoro like nothing just happened, and it’s the kind of smile that makes Zoro want to throw up.

“Anyway, I know I got my calculations wrong earlier, but it’s all sorted out now,” he says, eerily calm and not showing a hint of the anger that still burns through him. Only when he’s right in front of Zoro does the pirate reveal what is behind his back: a rusty, filthy and blood-stained pair of pliers. “Right, Roronoa, time for something just as painful but unlikely to make this shit happen again.”

Zoro stares at him, not daring himself to speak again.

“Grab his hand!” the leader yells, and everything happens in a blur.

When Zoro can process his surroundings again, he finds one of the pirates pinning his shackled wrist to the wall, whilst the leader holds the pair of pliers right next to Zoro’s hand. Oh shit.

Clenching his hand, the leader opens the pliers and places them around the grubby fingernail of Zoro’s left forefinger. He releases the pressure, and the pliers clamp tightly around Zoro’s nail. He can’t say it hurts, but pinching his fingernail like that is rather uncomfortable.

Zoro holds his breath, waiting for it. This is going to hurt. Thanks to all the nerve endings in his finger, it might hurt even more than the stab wound. Why did he have to open his fucking mouth?

“This, Roronoa, is what happens when you mouth off to me,” the leader says, and he starts to pull.

Zoro expected him to yank and pulls his nail off in one go, but no, the bastard does it slowly. With horrifically slow movements, he pulls Zoro’s nail up from his finger, tearing his flesh and exposing his nail bed. Zoro keeps holding his breath, jaw gritted, pain shooting up his arm like his nerves are on fire, and the bastard just keeps pulling and pulling, slowly ripping his nail from his finger. Blood starts to ooze from under his nail, running down his hand and staining the pliers.

When his vision starts to blur, Zoro has to exhale, letting his breath out with a spluttering wheeze. He gasps for breath, and the captors laugh at him.

“Oh dear, does that hurt?” one of them says, his tone so patronising Zoro wants to punch him.

His skin tears, blood flowing from his finger, and when the leader gives one final tug and rips Zoro’s nail from his finger, tearing his skin right down to his first knuckle, Zoro cries out. Fuck, how can this hurt just as much as a deep stab wound?

Blood running freely from his finger, Zoro hangs his head, trying to catch his breath. He barely registers it when his captors laugh and leave the cell, lost in the pain and trying not to faint.

\---

Night has fallen, but Luffy isn’t tired. Well, he’s totally exhausted, but he’s not sleepy. He doesn’t even enter the bunkroom, instead sitting on a chair out on deck, head tilted backwards to stare up at the sky.

After their discussion earlier, he and his crew decided to just pick a port at random and head in that direction. They’ll be there in less than a day, and if they don’t find any clues or even Zoro himself, they’ll just try the next one. And the next. They’ll do this over and over again until they find Zoro. They have to.

“Are you coming to bed, Luffy?” Nami says, sticking her head out of the bunkroom.

“I… I’m not tired.”

“None of us feel like sleeping, but we need to try.”

Luffy bows his head, sighing. He hears Nami approach, but he doesn’t look up.

“Look, Luffy, we need to rest,” she says, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “We’re all exhausted and injured and have that gas still in our systems. Even if we don’t sleep, we should still try. Come on, let’s go to bed.”

Finally, he raises his head, staring up at her. Nami has always been good an encouraging Luffy to do things. She holds out her hand and he takes it, interlocking their fingers.

“Thanks,” he whispers, smiling the biggest smile he can manage as he looks at his queerplatonic partner, a person he loves his own, aromantic way. “I love you.”

Nami smiles and squeezes his hand, leading him towards the bunkroom. “Love you too.”

\---

He can’t breathe. He’s drowning.

His wheezy lungs burn, the need to get oxygen overwhelming him. he tries to breathe, but water dribbles into his mouth and down his windpipe, choking him.

Zoro tries to kick his legs and thrash his arms, but all it achieves is his metal cuffs rubbing his skin until blisters start to form. He can’t even thrash his head, since the back of his head is pinned to the floor, hands pressing his head so hard he fears it might break a bone.

But right now, all he can think is about is how he’s about to fucking die.

A wet cloth is placed over his nose and mouth, and his captors hold a large bottle of water. Every thirty seconds or so, they pour water over the cloth, and water drips down Zoro’s throat, making him feel like he is drowning.

Of course, he knows what this is, how people don’t usually die from water boarding. Logically, he knows this isn’t going to kill him.

But the logical part of your brain stops working the moment this torture begins. Zoro’s brain blares with the need for oxygen, the overwhelming fear of drowning being the only thing he can think of.

Laughing, his captors do it again, soaking the already wet cloth in water. This time, most of it goes up Zoro’s nose, burning his sinuses in that horrible way that happens whenever you go underwater at the swimming pool. Except… far worse than that. Because he doesn’t get the chance to cough and sneeze it out of him. And it goes on for several seconds, seconds that seem like thousands of years to Zoro in that moment.

He coughs and splutters, trying to hold his breath but his oxygen deprived brain screaming at him until he has no choice but to inhale – at which point he breathes in more of the water being poured over the fabric and he chokes, his brain thinking he is on the verge of drowning and starting the horrific cycle all over again.

Being stabbed was nothing like this. Having his fingernail ripped out was nothing like this.

He knows all three are torture, but this… no, water boarding is more than torture.

Zoro finds tears in his eyes, and he screws them up, humiliated.

When it finally ends, his captors haul Zoro into a sitting position and remove the fabric. Immediately, he coughs so hard his throat feels raw, needing to get this water out of him. He coughs until he gags, and Zoro vomits down his shirt.

“Disgusting,” one of his captors says.

Zoro groans, his vomit burning his raw throat even more. He spits out stomach acid, and lets out a long sigh.

He would rather die than go through that again. truly.

“Right, do you finally understand why you shouldn’t mouth me off, Roronoa?” the leader says.

Zoro nods despite the pain it causes, coughing until he wheezes. Everything burns, everything aches.

“That’s good. okay, it’s bedtime for little Roronoa,” he says, his tone patronising like he’s speaking to a disobedient kid.

For the first time, Zoro realises it is dark outside, the only light coming from the numerous lamps and torches his captors brought into his cell when the torture began.

For a brief, fleeting moment, he hopes they will let him sleep on the floor.

That doesn’t last.

His aching, stiff body protesting, Zoro gets winched back into his awkward standing position, this time his arms secured so his hands are either side of his head. At this angle, he can see his finger, covered in so much dry and congealed blood that you wouldn’t be able to tell his nail is missing.

At this point, one of his captors steps forwards and fastens a metal collar around his neck, chains attached to the chains of his other restraints. With this thing at this angle, he can’t even bow his head.

“Have fun, Roronoa.”

“Oh, just in case you hadn’t worked it out, you’ll strangle yourself if you fall asleep. Night-night.”

They all leave, taking their lamps with them, and the cell plunges into total darkness. Zoro groans, the collar digging into his neck, and listens to the sound of his rapid heartbeat in his ears and the wheeze of his aching, burning lungs.

For the first time in his life, a terrifying through enters Zoro’s mind:

_I wish I was dead._


	4. Chapter 4

Luffy groans, rubbing his eyes. His eyelids burn with fatigue, and he yawns so hard his jaw clicks. The sun has only just begun to rise, casting the ocean in sunlight that dazzles Luffy, making him squint. He never normally gets up this early; does anyone get up at 4am?

“Well,” Sanji says, following Luffy out of the bunkroom and heading for the kitchen. “That was, without a doubt, the worst night of my life.”

“Tell me about it,” Nami says, stretching her arms above her head. She also groans, eyelids drooping.

“I’m so tired,” Usopp whines.

“We’re all tired,” Luffy says.

Of course, he’s telling the truth. And just like Sanji, that was probably the worst night sleep Luffy has ever had. Mainly because he got no sleep at all.

At 10pm last night, Nami calmed Luffy down and led him into the bunkroom. He found the others already in bed, Sanji in his hammock and Usopp on the pair of futons pulled together that Luffy and his three partners always sleep on together. Just like him and Nami, they looked exhausted… but no one appeared sleepy in the slightest.

“Hey, Luffy,” Usopp said, yawning. “You feeling any better?”

“A bit, thanks,” Luffy said.

Too tired to change into his pyjamas, he simply pulled off his vest, kicked off his shoes and joined Usopp under the blankets. Nami just took off her shoes, and curled up in a ball the moment she lay down. Luffy stared at her, amazed to see her looking so… vulnerable. He wanted to comfort her, but he couldn’t find the right words. He could never find the right words.

“Okay, night, guys,” Sanji said, turning out the light.

“Night,” Luffy said through a yawn, closing his eyes.

He only lay there for a few minutes, but it felt like hours had passed. He wanted to sleep, wake up tomorrow and be fully energised for their search, but… his brain wouldn’t shut up. His heart pounded, adrenaline pumping through his body, and Luffy found his rapid heartbeat and jittery muscles impossible to ignore. He rolled over and tried to get comfortable, but it didn’t help. When he realised the others were doing the same thing, he sighed heavily and sat up.

“Uh, guys, is anyone actually sleepy?”

Sanji didn’t turn the light on, but Luffy could make out his silhouette through the moonlight that came through the gap in the door. Beside him, Usopp rolled onto his back and Nami sat up, both of them looking at him.

“Now you mention it… no,” Sanji said. “I’m not sleepy at all. Fuck.”

“Well, we need to try, guys,” Nami said.

Usopp sighed. “We are trying.”

Luffy groaned, rubbing his eyes.

And things continued like that for the next six hours, bringing him up to now. If anyone slept, it was for about ten minutes at a time before waking up again, restless. Luffy didn’t sleep at all, just lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling, anxiety eating away and his insides.

At 3am, he jumped to his feet and yelled, “What’s the point of this?!”

“What the fuck, Luffy?” Sanji moaned, nearly falling out of his hammock.

“We can’t sleep. We might as well be looking for—”

“Luffy, I can’t navigate in the dark,” Nami said. “We’ll just get up as soon as it gets light, deal?”

He sighed, sitting back on the futon with a thump. “Deal.”

Buttoning his vest, Luffy wanders across the deck, avoiding looking in the direction of the sunrise. He’s so tired, but… he just can’t sleep.

And for the first time in his life, the smell of cooking breakfast doesn’t make his stomach rumble. No, he just feels very, very sick.

\---

Zoro has never been afraid of the dark, but he’s still grateful when the sun begins to rise very early in the morning, for it shines through the tiny window of his cell, pulling him out of pitch darkness for the first time in what must only have been six or seven hours but actually feels like an eternity. Seriously, being in total darkness isn’t scary, as such, but… when you’re chained to the wall and suffering severe injuries, it doesn’t exactly help the overwhelming feeling of vulnerability go away.

Of course, he’s still vulnerable, but it helps a bit. Zoro knows it makes no sense, but he can’t seem to think straight. Everything throbs with pain, his lungs and throat burning from the water boarding, his leg and finger pounding from the torture, and everything else aching from being forced to stand for all this time. Add the sleep deprivation into the mix, and… yeah, he feels like total shit.

His stomach rumbles slightly, but Zoro just ignores it. He knows he won’t get fed, and the nausea from his anxiety and puking after being water boarded last night hasn’t gone away, leaving him certain that, if he got to eat, he’d just throw it up anyway. His mouth and lips are incredibly dry, the dehydration really starting to set in now. Although these guys must have to give him water at some point, otherwise he’ll die in three or so days, and they surely want him alive longer than that. But who knows. Nothing about these bastards makes any sense to him.

All he can think about is his need to sleep, but that isn’t going to happen. Every so often, he almost drops off to sleep, only for his body to slump and the collar to dig into his neck, making him choke.

It may be starting to get light, but his captors aren’t here yet. Zoro hopes they sleep really late so he gets as long as possible without them. He may feel like total shit, but he’d rather be alone than have those bastards with him.

He doesn’t want to get tortured again.

\---

Having forced himself to eat breakfast, the food sits heavily in Luffy’s stomach, and the slightest movement makes him feel sick. He does his best to keep it down, taking a seat as far away from the door to the kitchen as possible, and groans.

They need to resume their search, but part of him knows it will take a very long time, if they even find him at all…

No! Luffy forces those thoughts to the back of his mind, pasting a fake smile across his face. He can’t think like that. He just can’t.

“Are you okay, Luffy?” Usopp says, wandering over. His eyes are red from crying so much yesterday, with dark smudges of fatigue under them. He looks awful, and Luffy wonders if he looks like that too.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just… feel a bit sick.”

Usopp drags a chair right up next to his, and sits down. “Yeah, me too. I thought eating a big breakfast would make me feel better after such a crappy night’s sleep, but… now I just feel sick.”

Luffy chuckles, but the sound comes out weaker than he wanted. “I know how that feels.”

Usopp glances at Luffy, and holds out his hand. Without speaking, Luffy takes Usopp’s hand, squeezing it tightly. His partner smiles weakly, and Luffy gives a forced grin in return.

“Hey Luffy, Usopp!” Nami calls, now stood by the ship’s wheel, her navigation equipment balanced on a chair. “I’m gonna continue sailing towards the closest port. If you need to, go back to bed. Me and Sanji can manage things for a while.”

“Did you say my name, my darling?” Sanji says, poking his head out of the kitchen, a dishcloth in one hand and a plate in the other.

Nami rolls her eyes. “I was just saying we can handle things for a bit if those guys need a sleep.”

Sanji’s eyes flick towards Luffy and Usopp, before staring at Nami again. “Of course. that’s fine by me. As long as I get a turn later.”

“That seems fair,” Usopp says, standing up. “Come on, Luffy.” He makes to walk towards the bunkroom, but Luffy doesn’t get up. “Luffy?”

“I… I don’t wanna go back to bed,” Luffy says. “Not after all the time I spent in there not sleeping. I, I’ll just stay here. You can go, if you want.”

Usopp stares at Luffy; Luffy stares down at the deck.

“No, it’s okay. I’ll stay here too,” he says, squeezing Luffy’s hand. “Hey, do either of you need any help?”

Luffy stares at Usopp, and manages a real smile. “Yeah, we’re free to help.”

Across the deck, Nami looks at the pair and smiles as tears shine in her eyes.

\---

Dehydration really is an unpleasant feeling. Cracked lips, a painfully dry mouth, and a pounding headache are only the beginning. Zoro knows he’ll end up dead if it carries on for a couple more days. But he’s not going to say a fucking word to these bastards, lest they decide to water board him again (because that’s totally a good way to deal with dehydration… not) or something fucked up like that.

Speaking of his captors, they’re back. Their footsteps announce their arrival several seconds before the key turns in the rusty lock, and Zoro finds himself tensing up on reflex. What the fuck? He’s not getting scared of them, is he?

“Good morning, Roronoa Zoro,” the leader says, spinning the ring of keys around his finger as he saunters into the room. When Zoro doesn’t reply (because who in their right mind wants to reply to a piece of shit that’s torturing them?), he grabs Zoro’s jaw and says, “Good. Morning. Roronoa.”

Taking the hint, Zoro swallows (his dry, sore throat burning) and mumbles, “Morning.”

“That’s better,” the second pirate says.

The leader smiles, letting go of Zoro’s face. “Now, I can’t help but notice how dry your lips are. I mean, they’ve cracked in so many places. You must be really dehydrated, right?”

Zoro stares at him, remembering how his lips split several times in the night and bled slightly, blood running into his mouth. He must have trails of dry blood across his chin, but he doesn’t care. it can’t exactly make him look worse. Again taking the hint that pain will follow, Zoro gives up on his plan to hide this from his captors, and says, “Yeah.”

“Yeah, I thought so. Are you thirsty, Roronoa?” the leader says, talking to him like he’s a fucking kid again.

Of course he is! It’s a stupid question, but Zoro knows there is a reason he asked it. They don’t want to know about his wellbeing or anything like that.

No, they just want to taunt him.

“Hang on a minute!” And in an incredibly annoying tone that makes his fellow pirates laugh and Zoro want to smash his face in, the leader inhales sharply, smiles like he just thought of something amazing, and wanders back over to Zoro. “You haven’t had a drink in almost twenty four hours, have you? And that means… you must really need a piss, Roronoa.”

Zoro glares at him, jaw gritted. He hadn’t even paid attention to his bladder what with everything else going on, but now he focuses, he realises how full his bladder is. He’s not bursting (probably because he’s had nothing to drink for all this time), but he does rather need to go. But he doesn’t want to admit it, and so shakes his head (ignoring the pain that throbs behind his forehead) and says, “No, I’m fine.”

“Liar!” the third pirate yells.

The leader takes a step backwards, looking Zoro up and down. And before Zoro can even tense up, he lifts his leg and jabs the sole of his shoe into Zoro’s lower abdomen as hard as he can.

Zoro gasps, winded. Pain flares through his stomach, but Zoro barely feels it. Because…

Discomfort overwhelms his full bladder, and wet heat spreads across Zoro’s groin.

Oh shit!

“Fucking hell, he’s pissing himself!” one of the captors yells, and they all howl with laughter.

He clenches his muscles, but it is futile. It won’t stop, and Zoro just has to stand there as he pisses himself in front of them, his pants drenched in his own urine. He screws his eyes up, longing for this to be over.

When it finally ends, he finds the captors have gone. But that hardly reassures him, and Zoro groans, humiliated.

\---

After some time has passed (but not enough for his piss-soaked clothes to even begin to dry), his captors return. They look at the mess he made and stifle laughter, and Zoro isn’t sure if he’s glad or annoyed the angle of his head prevents him from looking down at himself. One of them holds something behind his back, and Zoro clenches his teeth, hoping that they aren’t going to water board him again.

“Look what we’ve got,” the leader says, and the third pirate reveals what he had behind his back:

Zoro’s sword.

Zoro flinches, amazed. They have his sword? He was sure they would have left it on the Merry when they took him. But, no, they have it. His sword, his only remaining blade after the fight with Arlong’s pirates, is right here, in front of him. But…

What are they going to do with it? They obviously didn’t bring it to him as a fucking present.

“See, I knew he’d be shocked. Right, men, you know what to do.”

“Yes, Boss.”

And, only seconds after Zoro saw his sword, one of the captors swings it and slams it against the wall. The blade scrapes against the stone with a horrific screech (Zoro wants to cover his ears, but he can’t), and large scratches dull the once-pristine metal.

Zoro glares at them, wanting to yell but not sure what to say.

But despite his lack of speech, his expression must give away his horror.

“Do it again,” the leader says, grinning sadistically.

And Zoro just stares as the pirates scratch his precious sword, scraping it against the wall or hitting it with rocks, ruining his prized possession. Anger bubbles up inside him and, finally, he can’t take this anymore.

“Don’t you fucking dare do that!” he yells, his voice hoarse but still threatening.

Within seconds, he regrets his outburst.

“Don’t you fucking dare talk to me like that!” the leader spits, glaring at him. “Give me the sword.” As one of his men passes him the damaged sword, he holds it up to Zoro’s throat, forcing eye contact again. “That was gonna be it, but, no, you had to disrespect me again, you piece of shit. Get ready, Roronoa.”

And before Zoro has a chance to wonder what he means, the leader presses the edge of his sword against Zoro’s upper arm, the same one that was stabbed soon after he was kidnapped. He pushes down, not breaking the skin, and makes agonising eye contact with Zoro. And without warning, he rips the blade across Zoro’s arm, tearing his skin open with a horrific popping sensation.

Zoro cries out, blood pouring from the wound, deep enough to see layers of fat through the blood, the edges of the gash pulled further apart as Zoro clenches his muscles. He groans, hot blood running down his arm, wanting to be sick but forcing the nausea down.

And as Zoro cries out in agony, his captors cut gashes all over his body, only leaving when blood drips onto the floor by Zoro’s feet. As they walk away, he hears them laughing, and Zoro throws up.

\---

When the sun has set, Nami puts away her equipment, Sanji drops anchor and they prepare for another night of not-sleep. They may have visited one of the ports on her map today, but there are still many more to go. Of course, Zoro wasn’t there. She knew he wouldn’t be, but the disappointment still brought tears to her eyes.

“Come on, guys, it’s time for bed,” she says, wandering over to Luffy and Usopp, who, after spending all day helping Sanji with his cooking chores or steering the ship for a bit to save Nami’s arms from aching, have slumped back in the chairs she saw them in this morning. Except now they both look even worse, dark marks under their eyes and groggy to the point they’re starting to forget things. “Come on, get into the bunkroom.”

“Okay, Nami,” Luffy says, slurring his words slightly. He takes Usopp’s hand and tugs, leading Usopp after him. “Come on, Usopp.”

“Okay, Luffy,” Usopp mumbles.

Honestly, if she weren’t so stressed, the sight of her partners acting like kids from their exhaustion would be hilarious. But right now, she can’t find anything funny.

Nami puts her hands on their backs and pushes them into the bunkroom. Sanji stands by his hammock, pulling his pyjama shirt over his head. He looks like shit too, but has managed to cope with the sleep deprivation much better than the rest of them (perhaps it’s the cigarettes). Usopp and Luffy flop onto the futon without taking their shoes off, and fall asleep within seconds. Nami knows she’ll likely do the same the moment she joins them, but… she doesn’t want to go to bed yet.

Sighing, she turns and heads out of the bunkroom. Nami wanders over to the tangerine trees that stand on the deck, trying to ignore memories from her fucked up past. She sighs again, folding her arms across her chest.

With the guys out of the way, she can finally think. But her thoughts turn to Zoro and her eyes fill with tears. She’s always the strong one, the mature one, but without the others around, this long-held façade shatters. Nami hunches forwards, tears spilling down her face and a spluttering sob escaping her throat.

“Nami?”

She jumps, hands flying up to her face. Nami scrubs at her eyes before turning around. Sanji stands a few feet away, looking like someone just reached into his chest and broke his heart.

“Nami, are you crying?”

She sniffs, longing for the tears to stop, but they just keep coming. “No. Course I’m not crying,” she says, her voice cracking.

Slowly, Sanji steps closer. “Oh, Nami, it’s okay—”

“But it’s not!” she hisses, head pounding as she cries. “It’s not okay, Sanji. This is all so fucked up and I… I don’t know what to do!”

“You don’t have to hold it all in.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t have to feel like you have to always be strong, Nami,” Sanji says, stepping closer still. “You have feelings, and you need to express them. If you need to cry, then cry. we all feel awful, and…” He smiles weakly, his bottom lip twitching. “It’s okay to be sad. And… and you’re not alone, remember that. We’re here. We’re with you.”

Sanji holds out his arms, and Nami stares at him. Normally, she would never hug Sanji, but in a state like this… she steps closer and buries her face in his chest.

“There there,” he says, wrapping his arms around her and rubbing her back. “It’s okay, my darling Nami. It’s okay.”

And she knows it’s not really okay, but… his words help. They stay in that embrace for what feels like hours until the tears stop falling.


	5. Chapter 5

Zoro’s eyelids flicker shut, and for a second, his brain switches off. But then his legs buckle and his collar strangles him, pressing against his larynx and pulling him around with the pain of his windpipe being squeezed shut. Groaning, he forces his wobbling legs to straighten and hauls himself back into a standing position, taking the pressure off of his neck.

He heaves in a raspy breath, and exhales slowly, puffing his cheeks out. He has never been awake this long in his life, and this isn’t the first time he has fallen asleep only to strangle himself and jerk awake. Zoro had hoped his body would stop doing it by now, but when you are this sleep deprived, your brain shuts off the moment you stop thinking. Still, it’s fucking annoying.

And it isn’t helped by the fact his fucking captors are in his cell, and just saw the whole thing. They laugh, too fucking loud and hurting his ears, and Zoro longs to smash their faces in.

“Nice one, Roronoa,” their leader says, doubled over laughing at him.

Zoro wants to swear at him, but just grits his teeth. This isn’t worth getting injured over. After all, his cuts from his sword from yesterday have barely began to scab over, and hurt so badly nausea bubbles in his guts.

More than anything, right now, all Zoro wants is for these bastards to leave him alone. They arrived sometime after sunrise, and have been here ever since. Sometimes, one of them will leave (probably to go to the bathroom or something), but there are always at least two of them in the cell with him at any given time.

And it’s really getting to him in a way he can’t explain. Of course, he’s pissed off that they just stand there, staring at him and making comments whenever he yawns or nearly falls asleep or grunts in pain, but it’s more than that. He wouldn’t say he is scared of them, because they haven’t actually done anything yet, but…

No, more than that, their presence unnerves him. Just then standing there, looking at him, is enough to get Zoro’s exhausted, dehydrated brain whirring with thoughts. When will they next torture him? What will they do to him? Are they going to kill him?

Yeah, that’s it. The three of them being here is causing his brain to swirl with endless thoughts about his situation, and many of them make anxiety stab at his chest. Which is pretty fucking weird considering Zoro never gets anxious. Just what is this situation doing to his brain?

The pirate leader stares at Zoro’s gritted jaw, and stops laughing. He gives his men hard thumps in the chest, and they both shut up too. With the noise reduced, Zoro exhales slowly, relaxing his jaw.

The leader steps closer, grinning. Oh shit.

“Hey, I just noticed something. Whenever we’re too loud, Roronoa here grits his teeth. Do you not like loud noises or something?” he says, leaning right into Zoro’s personal space. “And fucking look at me when I talk to you!”

With Zoro once again enduring forced eye contact, his captor studies Zoro, fascinated. And without any warning, the leader puts his mouth right up to Zoro’s ear and yells, “Hello?!”

Zoro flinches, screwing his eyes up as pain ricochets around his skull, his eardrum throbbing. He may be better with loud noises than when he was a kid, but loud noises this close to his ears hurt like hell. He clenches his good hand into a tight fist, grunting slightly.

The leader laughs, stepping backwards. “Fucking hell, this is awesome! Roronoa hates loud noises like a kid… hang on a second. Does hating eye contact and loud noises ring any bells, boys?”

The other two pirates look at each other, and one of them nods.

“Oh yeah! He’s got autism, right boss?”

 _Shit!_ Zoro thinks.

“Yeah, I think he does. And you know what that means?” the leader says, looking at them both and grinning. “We’ve got a load more ways to fuck with him now.”

Zoro was dreading this happening. He has never been open about his autism, so it wasn’t common knowledge that the pirate hunter Zoro is autistic, but he knows that most people have at least heard of autism these days. And that bastard’s comment is actually what he feared; they’ve just found an incredibly easy way to torture him: deliberately triggering his sensory issues.

Fucking brilliant.

Within seconds of his words, the three pirates crowd around him. They whistle and talk way too loud and laugh whilst Zoro stands there, unable to cover his ears and longing for this to end before he has a meltdown. He screws his eyes up, but gets his jaw grabbed, twisting his neck at a painful angle.

“Keep your fucking eyes open, Roronoa,” the leader hisses, staring into Zoro’s eyes.

His head hurts so much, ears burning and eyes throbbing, and Zoro just wants to scream.

After only a few minutes of this shit, he’s had enough.

“Fuck off!” he snaps. “Get off of me!”

The captors fall into silence, but it’s not a peaceful sound. No… Zoro opens his eyes, staring at them. The three men burn with anger, and Zoro knows what is coming.

At least, he thought he did.

“Now, now, Roronoa, there’s no need to look at us like that,” the leader says, smiling but the expression not quite masking his fury. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”

“We’re not?” the second pirate says, and the leader punches him.

“No, we’re not,” he says, looking at his men. “We’re gonna tell Roronoa Zoro a story.”

Zoro just stares, having no idea where this is going. Is it all a bluff and they’re about to torture him? Or does he mean it and they’re going to tell him a story? But a story about what?

The leader walks up to Zoro again, smirking. “Hey, do you remember when we hit your ship with the gas grenade? Well, did you wonder what happened to your crewmates?”

Zoro’s eyes widen, but he can’t bring himself to talk. This has to be a trap, right?

“Yeah, I’m not surprised,” the leader says as though Zoro answered him. “Well, here’s the thing. I was going to let you stay blissfully ignorant about all this, but you just can’t keep your damn mouth shut. So… you can know the truth. And the truth is… they’re dead, Roronoa.”

Still, Zoro stays silent. He’s lying. He has to be lying. This must all be a ruse to make Zoro flip out so they can beat him up again.

But… what if it’s true?

“Yeah, totally dead. We killed them all. They were all asleep when it happened, but it still wasn’t pretty. The blond guy? We slit his throat. His blood sprayed everywhere and his head hung back, limp. The ugly guy with the long nose? I stamped on his head until his skull caved in, his brains spilling all over the deck of your pathetic ship.”

Zoro stares, nausea twisting in his stomach. It’s not true. It can’t be true. He knows this must all be a lie… but his graphic descriptions fill his mind with horrific images, and all he can see is Sanji and Usopp’s mutilated corpses. He wants to throw up. He wants to scream. He wants to die.

“And the girl? Well, I had great fun slicing her stomach open and letting all her guts spill out as she breathed her last.” The pirate grins sadistically, staring at Zoro. “But your captain, Straw Hat, he was the best. We kept him alive until the gas wore off, and his screams were—”

“Shut up!” Zoro yells, his voice echoing around the room. “Fucking shut up!”

The leader laughs and the last thing Zoro sees is a hand flying towards his head, and then a fist smashes into his temple and everything goes black.

\---

Nami sighs, eyes focused on her map. The sun has set, so she has to use candlelight, the dim flicker of the flame giving her already aching eyes eyestrain. She blinks, wondering if she might fall asleep the moment she stops concentrating, and grits her jaw. And as her head pounds, Nami takes out the list of ports she made the other day, and crosses through two more names.

Today was another waste of time. The moment the sun came up, Nami and Sanji got up and resumed sailing towards the next place on her list. Luffy and Usopp wouldn’t stir no matter how many times Sanji kicked them, so they just left the pair to it. After all, when they were this tired, they were pretty much useless.

Of course, she and Sanji were tired too, but neither of them were coping nearly as bad as Luffy and Usopp. Again, Nami assumes Sanji is better at staying awake because of how much he smokes, whilst Nami… well, she doesn’t talk about it, but back when she worked for Arlong, she regularly went two or three days straight without sleep. She’s used to this.

Sanji cooked them both a light breakfast (leaving leftovers for Luffy and Usopp to have if they ever woke up), and he coaxed Nami away from the ship’s wheel for long enough to eat at the table. She thanked him, embarrassed.

As much as she wanted to forget it ever happened, Nami had to talk about the previous night. When she broke down sobbing over this horrible situation, Sanji… he comforted her. And his words really helped. Helped enough to calm her down and actually let her sleep for a few hours.

The problem with being Nami is… she has no idea how to be dependent on other people. She’s learned a lot since joining Luffy’s crew, but the whole idea of needing another person’s support seems alien to her. Nami is always the one doing the comforting, staying calm and collected whilst her partners (and sometimes Sanji) freak out. But last night… the roles were reversed. And other than that moment back in Cocoyashi Village when Luffy found her sobbing and bleeding and placed his hat on her head, she can’t remember a time she relied on the emotional support of another person.

She sighed, letting out an awkward cough. “Uh, Sanji—”

“If this is about last night, my darling Nami, you don’t have to say anything,” Sanji said, smirking.

“How did you…?” Nami said, staring at him. As Sanji laughed, she said, “Thanks.”

The two of them stayed out on deck alone for the next five hours, and she found Sanji’s presence comforting. And when they pulled up to the second port on Nami’s list and ran off to hunt for Zoro, he gave her a reassuring smile.

Of course, they didn’t find him. Why would they be so lucky? And as they returned to the Going Merry, Sanji saw the way Nami trembled and placed a comforting hand on her back. Honestly, when he isn’t flirting with her, Sanji is a really good friend.

They were alone until just after 4pm, when Usopp and Luffy woke up. Even after an impressive fifteen hours of sleep, they still looked like total shit.

“Hey, Nami,” Luffy said, wandering over and hugging her. “You okay.”

Nami glanced at Sanji, before smiling. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

The mood soon dropped when Luffy and Usopp learned about their unsuccessful exploration earlier in the day.

“Crap,” Usopp muttered, rubbing his eyes.

“Well, maybe the next one!” Luffy said, offering them all a beaming smile that didn’t look quite right.

Sanji shrugged. “Yeah, maybe the next one.”

“Speaking of the next port,” Nami said, grabbing her chart. “If we keep up this pace, we should hit the next one before dark.”

Usopp grinned. “Awesome!”

And as her partners hugged and bounced around like total idiots, Sanji muffled laughter into his hands and Nami rolled her eyes.

And that brings her up to the present, where Nami sits up in the crow’s nest, staring at the next port. She knows she is not as blindly optimistic as Luffy, but she finds herself hoping, begging, pleading that they’ll find Zoro here. Please.

\---

When Zoro comes around, the first thing he feels is cold stone against his knees and forehead. He opens his eyes, blinking back tears of agony from the punch that knocked him out, and finds it dark except for candlelight in the cell. Just how long was he out?

It’s hard to process anything in this state, but Zoro quickly realises he is in a totally new position. He’s on his knees and facing the wall, arms held out to his sides by his chains, and his slumped posture making his forehead press against the wall. It feels wonderful to have his weight off of his feet, but… he knows this isn’t good. The last time they moved him, he was water boarded. So what’s about to happen now?

“So,” the leader says. Zoro can’t see him, but he knows that evil voice anywhere. “As punishment for yelling at me when I was just doing you a favour telling you what happened to your crew, I thought we’d try something new.”

Zoro doesn’t answer, and silence hangs over them for a few seconds.

And then… pain explodes across his back.

A whip hits his back with an audible crack, ripping open the fabric that covers his back and burning his skin. Zoro gasps, and the pirates laugh.

“It’s just a simple whip, but it works, trust me.”

He strikes Zoro again, this time hitting bare skin through the tear in the fabric, and the pain triples in severity. Zoro grits his jaw, screwing his eyes up.

Laughing, the pirate whips him relentlessly. He strikes Zoro every few seconds, lashing him as hard as he can. Soon, the force of the blows cuts a long gash across Zoro’s shoulder blades, and blood trickles down his back.

Again and again, the whip strikes him, cutting gash after gash in his skin. Zoro keeps his mouth shut, longing not to scream, and his breathes come out frantic through his nose, shuddering from the agony.

When will this end?

\---

“Fucking damn it!” Luffy cries, stomping around the deck like a petulant child.

Despite Nami’s pleading to whatever gods might exist, their second port visit of the day was a bust. They didn’t find Zoro. Just as she feared.

She crosses another name off of her list, and shoves her navigation equipment back into the chest before it gets dark. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots Usopp trying to calm Luffy down, but she doesn’t pay much attention.

This was such a ridiculous plan. But it’s still the best plan they have.

Once they sail far enough away from the port (they managed to sneak around without getting recognised as pirates, but they don’t want to stay too near that town overnight), the sun has started to set and Sanji drops anchor.

In the thirty-or-so minutes since they returned, Luffy has calmed down, and wanders over to Nami. “Hey, Nami? Sorry for swearing earlier. We’ll totally find him tomorrow, right?”

“You don’t have to apologise for being annoyed, Luffy,” she says. “But… it’s okay. And…” Again, she doesn’t really believe it, but she suspects Luffy doesn’t either. “Yeah, tomorrow might be our lucky day.”

Luffy smiles. “Yeah. It will.”

\---

Only when Zoro is almost unconscious does the torture end. His back must look like raw meat, covered in welts and bruises and open wounds that send blood running down his skin, and he finds a few tears running down his face.

He barely resisters as they hoist him back upright, the cold stone wall oddly soothing as it presses against his injured back. Zoro gasps, trying to hold back more tears, and groans.

The pirates move to leave, but the leader stays. He leans closer to Zoro, and whispers, “Oh, by the way Straw Hat said something very interesting before he died.”

And before Zoro can even think to respond, the leader exits the room, leaving those words hanging in the air.


	6. Chapter 6

“Oh, by the way Straw Hat said something very interesting before he died.”

The cell door slams behind the still laughing captor, and the cell falls into silence. Those words echo around his head, and Zoro doesn’t know what to do. What did Luffy say to this bastard?

No, that’s stupid. There is no way Luffy is dead. The bastard has to be lying! He has to…

But despite the rational part of his brain insisting it must be a lie, Zoro’s heart rate increases, and he lets out a shuddering breath. Luffy isn’t dead, right?

He takes a deep breath, close to fainting, and locks out his knees to stop them buckling. Zoro grits his jaw and shifts in his restraints, and his back presses against the wall again. His open wounds squash against the cold, wet stones, and he hisses at the pain. But at least the pain helps ground him, the threat of fainting vanishing.

But Zoro can’t calm down that easily. He can’t get that man’s words out of his head. How can he? Especially after hearing the incredibly graphic descriptions of the murders of his crewmates.

No! That has to be fake too! They have to be lying.

He knows this.

So why can’t he calm down?

Despite knowing the chance of getting whipped again is rather high, Zoro can’t keep his mouth shut any longer. He has to know what Luffy said. He needs to know what Luffy said. Only after hearing those words supposedly said by his captain and partner will Zoro know if it is the truth or these pirates are just fucking with his head.

But… will they tell him? Or will they just laugh in his face and torture him again? He doesn’t know.

But he has to take this chance.

“Hey!” Zoro yells, still pissed off by how croaky his voice sounds. “Hey, I wanna talk to you!”

He gets no response. The bastards must hear him (this place can’t be that big), and so much be ignoring him. The pieces of shit.

“Hey, listen to me! Tell me what Luffy said, you bastards! Tell me!”

But no matter how many times Zoro screams those words, his voice cracking with effort and dizziness overtaking him whenever he moves against his restraints, he never gets an answer.

He screams at them for hours, and only stops when his voice breaks and his words fade away. Zoro coughs, his through bone dry, his voice box raw from shouting so much, and groans, wondering if he’s going to faint.

He doesn’t faint, but his voice doesn’t come back. But even without his voice, Luffy is all he thinks of, and Zoro vows to fucking destroy his captors when he gets out of here.

If he gets out of here.

\---

As sunlight begins to stream through the tiny window, Zoro blinks slowly, watching the room rotate. It takes several seconds for the cell to stop spinning, but his brain still seems to roll around inside his skull. Zoro groans, certain this is more than just dizziness. Is this what you call vertigo? Whatever it’s called, he wants it to stop.

He swallows, pain burning in his sore throat, and lets out a grunt. All that screaming was for nothing; he never got a response, and now he can’t talk, his throat burns and he feels even worse. Why is he so fucking stupid?

Zoro closes his eyes, trying to focus on anything other than his throat. His wounds from being whipped have begun to scab over, and itch rather than sting. But the thing that really gets his attention is his heartbeat.

Now, Zoro has had palpitations before (during battles or whilst exercising), but during his time in this cell, he can almost always hear his own heart drumming in his ears. The recent and irritating bouts of anxiety make his heart rate kick up for a while, pounding in his ears. But for the last few hours, his heart rate has got even worse.

Now, his heart drums really fast (probably at 180 beats per minute or so), at a speed he only normally feels whilst working out. So to stand here in this cell and have his heart drumming this fast… it’s kind of freaking him out.

He tries to breathe slowly, doing breathing exercises Nami always forces him to do after a workout, but it doesn’t help. This must be out of his control.

His heart drums and drums, and Zoro wonders if he might faint. Or possibly die if it gets any worse.

Just what is going on?

He wants to lean his head back against the wall, but his collar won’t allow the movement. So Zoro just stands there, eyes squeezed shut and trying to ignore what might lead to him having a heart attack in the not so distant future.

As he stands there, a muscle in his leg starts to prickle. Zoro goes to clench his calf muscle, but the act sends the muscle into spasm. It starts to cramp, and Zoro groans, angling his leg as much as his ankle cuffs will allow in the hope he can stretch the tight, burning muscle. But shifting his body weight makes his head spin, and he opens his eyes to the room spinning around and around.

Zoro groans, screwing his eyes up again. The vertigo won’t stop, and pain burns in his cramping muscle, and his heart pounds and pounds. Nausea bubbles in his guts, and Zoro retches.

He begs his body not to throw up, certain his sore throat will sting unbearably, but he can’t control it. When he already feels sick at the best of times in this shitty cell, his body jumps at the chance to make him throw up.

Zoro retches again, and vomit rises in his throat. Stomach acid burns his aching throat, pain exploding in his neck. It fills his mouth and Zoro coughs, a small amount of vomit spilling down his chin. He spits, trying to get the foul taste out of his mouth, and flinches when he realises all he threw up was concentrated stomach acid. But it makes sense. When was the last time he ate?

His breathing shuddering, Zoro slumps in his restraints, trying to calm himself down. Everything burns, but he forces himself to breathe.

He doesn’t notice the door open, and jumps when a voice echoes around the room.

“Whoa, you look like shit,” says the third pirate, obviously talking to Zoro but making no attempt to come closer. “Hey Boss, you need to see him!”

Footsteps thunder towards him, and the other two burst into the cell.

“Yeah, you weren’t wrong. Is this something to worry about, Boss?”

The leader scoffs. “Of course not. We never need to worry about Roronoa. But… yeah, this is pretty severe dehydration.”

“But it’s only been a couple of days.”

“Congratulations on failing a simple biology class,” the leader says, and even the groggy Zoro notices the biting sarcasm. “You’re a fucking idiot. Everyone knows humans can only go three or so days without water before they die. Roronoa here’s getting close to dying. And we’re not even beginning to get started with you,” he adds, staring at Zoro.

“So… what do we do?” the second pirate asks.

The leader grins. “We give him a drink.”

There’s something off about that smile. It takes his exhausted brain far too long to recognise it, but Zoro finally works it out. The leader’s smile is the same sadistic one he directs at Zoro right before they torture him.

Shit. How can they turn his need to drink into torture?

He soon finds out the answer to that question.

Two of the pirates nod and hurry out of the cell, leaving Zoro alone with their leader. He sneers at Zoro, leaning closer and staring at his face.

“You’ve got stomach acid all over your lips,” he says, grimacing. “You’re disgusting, Roronoa.”

He would argue, but he hasn’t got the energy. Plus, considering how he is covered in his own blood, piss and vomit, Zoro qualifies as disgusting by this point.

The leader takes out his knife, the same one he drove deep into Zoro’s leg and almost caused him to bleed to death (and is also the reason why part of his muscle in that leg has gone numb from nerve damage), and waves it in front of Zoro’s face. He watches Zoro’s eyes track the bloody blade, and laughs.

He doesn’t stab Zoro, but he might as well have done thanks to the level of anxiety it caused. Zoro’s stomach twists, and he wants to kick himself. What, is he getting scared of knives now?

Soon, the other two captors return, and Zoro stares. One carries a large bottle of water (almost identical to the one they used to pour water over his face during the water boarding), and the other carries something Zoro can’t identify.

“Great, give it here,” the leader says, taking the something from his subordinate and inspecting it.

Now Zoro gets a look. And the room spins.

The leader holds a short length of rubber tubing, and a plastic funnel. Neither look particularly clean, but Zoro can’t focus on that. Right now, all he sees is the smirk on the pirate’s face.

Okay, so this is how they’re going to torture him whilst making sure he won’t die from dehydration. These bastards are smarter than they look.

“Right, so you’ve probably worked it out by now, Roronoa, but this is how it’s gonna work,” the leader says, wandering over to Zoro. “I’m gonna put this tube in your mouth, and you’re gonna drink every last drop of water in this bottle. I’ve tested this before, so I know it’s physically possible to keep it all down, but you might get a bit of a tummy ache,” he says, ending his sentence with an infuriatingly patronising smile.

Zoro blinks, and only has time to take a deep breath before the rubber tube gets shoved into his mouth. It tastes like a shoe, the rubber coarse and disgusting against his tongue, and when Zoro bites down in an attempt to break it, he finds he can barely leave teeth marks in the thick tube. He wants to spit it out, but the third man grabs Zoro’s jaw, forcing him to bite down and keep the end of the tube in his mouth.

Keeping his eyes open, Zoro stares as the leader shoves the funnel into the other end of the tube and tells the second man to hold it at his head height. With the leader much taller than the permanently slumped Zoro, the tube angles upwards sharply, leading to the funnel and the bottle the leader just uncapped.

Zoro takes another deep breath, and then water runs down the tube. It pours into his mouth, the force making his cheeks puff out and a few dribbles leak from between his lips.

“Just swallow, or do you wanna choke to death?” the leader says.

Memories of the water boarding fill his mind, and Zoro forces himself to swallow. He takes most of it down his throat in one go, swallowing a lot of air in the process and making his stomach gurgle. He swallows the rest, but doesn’t get a break before they resume.

He knows how to do this now, swallowing immediately before the water can choke him, taking shallow breaths through his nose right after swallowing. Water pours into his previously painfully empty stomach, and soon makes it strain, bloated. He needs to belch or possibly throw up, but he doesn’t have a chance.

Zoro just gulps down the water, needing it so badly but unable to enjoy the hydration whilst almost drowning and being force fed a good two litres of water. His stomach burns, stretching to take it all, and Zoro hopes he can keep this down lest he die of dehydration.

Finally, it ends, the tube being pulled from his mouth so fast the corners of his mouth tear. Zoro gasps and lets out a loud belch, releasing agonising pressure from his overfull stomach.

His captors laugh, and Zoro stares back.

If he twitches the muscles in his abdomen, he can feel it all sloshing about inside of him. it feels horrible, and nausea begins to swirl in his guts, but Zoro grits his jaw. He has to keep it down. This water will keep him alive.

Although this means he’ll probably end up pissing himself in a few hours, just to add to the humiliation.

The leader grins, approaching Zoro. “Well done, Roronoa.” And the moment he gets close enough, he punches Zoro in the stomach.

Zoro gasps, pain flaring through his stomach, and fights back the urge to be sick.

He barely notices when his captors leave, lost in discomfort and nausea.

\---

Another day, another failure. Nami sighs heavily, crossing off yet another port on her list. Of course Zoro wasn’t there. Why would she be so lucky?

“Hey, Nami,” Luffy says, wandering over.

The sleep deprivation has left him with marks as ugly as bruises under his eyes, but at least Luffy is sleeping now (although his sleep includes waking up really early and demanding they resume the search, and tossing and turning in his sleep to the point he actually kicked Nami in the face last night), although only out of exhaustion. To be fair, they’re all sleeping better than that horrific first night, but it’s never enough, and Nami feels like she’s surviving on nervous energy more than sleep.

Nami sighs. “Hi.”

“So… today was a bust, huh?”

“You could put it that way,” she says, remembering how Luffy swore and threw a tantrum yesterday, before getting over it and being his optimistic self again.

“Still,” Luffy says, grinning and reaching for her hand. “Tomorrow will be our day, right?”

Nami looks up at Luffy. She wants to act like she did before, when she ignored her doubts and agreed with Luffy to make them all feel better.

But today… she just can’t. her lack of sleep and fear has led to a shortened fuse on her already short temper, and… Luffy just lit it.

She loves him, she really does. But… but Luffy can drive her mad. How can he be so happy and optimistic even at a time like this?

She frowns and snatches her hand away. “Not fucking likely.”

“Nami?” Luffy says, stepping closer. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m not okay!” she says, standing up and poking Luffy in the chest, glaring at him. “How can you keep asking that and expecting a nice reply? Luffy, this situation is fucking horrific. Of course I’m not fucking okay!” Nami screams, and Luffy stumbles backwards.

“Nami?” he says, confused.

“What’s going on out here?” Sanji yells, running out of the kitchen with a dishcloth still in his hand. “Nami, darling? What’s the matter?”

Usopp comes hurtling out of the bunkroom, his shirt pulled over his head and missing a shoe. “Guys? What’s going on?”

“Ugh, shut up!” Nami cries, grabbing her head and turning away. “Luffy, you drive me insane! Stop being blindly optimistic and face reality. Zoro is gone. We’re never gonna find him! We’re fucked!”

“No, don’t say that,” Luffy says, approaching her slowly. “Nami… we need to stay positive—”

“I can’t!” she yells, tears burning her eyes.

“Hey, seriously, calm it, guys,” Sanji says, hurrying over. “Luffy, give Nami some space.”

“But, but she’s mad at me and I don’t know why.”

Nami lets out a bitter laugh. “Shit, you’re stupid.”

Luffy sniffs; he must be tearing up. “Yeah, I am. Everyone always calls me stupid. Stupid Luffy, the boy who doesn’t understand stuff. I’m autistic, Nami!” he yells, voice breaking. “Stop expecting me to act just like you!”

“Luffy, back away…” Sanji says.

“But I just wanna—”

“Leave her alone!”

“You’re not her partner, Sanji!”

Nami groans, gritting her teeth. “Piss off, both of you!”

“Stop it!”

A fourth voice pierces the yells that surround Nami, and she flinches.

It’s Usopp’s voice, hitching with loud sobs.

“Guys, stop fighting,” he says, sniffling.

“Hey, why’re you crying?” Luffy says, and he thunders over to Usopp.

With reluctance, Nami straightens up and turns around. She finds Usopp sobbing and scrubbing at his face with the back of his hand, and Luffy grabbing his shoulders, near tears himself and painfully confused. Sanji still stands by Nami’s side, bubbling with anger.

She wipes her eyes before her tears can spill over, adrenaline making her limbs tremble. Nami inhales slowly, trying to calm herself.

A few seconds ago, she was so mad she could have punched Luffy across the face. But… hearing Usopp in tears… did something to her.

She loves him. She loves Luffy.

Why is she hurting them?

“Are you okay, Nami?” Sanji says, offering her a tissue and placing a hand on her shoulder.

“I… this is my fault.”

“But—”

“No, Sanji, don’t defend me because you’ve got a crush on me,” she says, rubbing her eyes with the tissue. “Luffy was just being his optimistic self. And… I snapped and yelled at him. It’s my fault.”

Sanji stares at her, and shoves a cigarette in his mouth. “Oh. I think I understand. Look, go sit at the table, and I’ll make us all some pancakes. And then we can talk this out calmly. Deal?”

Nami smiles weakly, still shaking. “Deal.”

And as Sanji hurries off, she looks at Usopp and Luffy. Both are scrubbing their faces with tissues, Luffy still clinging to Usopp.

Nami sighs and wanders over to the table. She sits down hard, resting her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands. She’s such a mess.

Slow, awkward footfalls signal the arrival of Luffy and Usopp sends before they plonk down next to her, Luffy bouncing his legs under the table and Usopp still on the edge of tears.

“Hey…” Nami says, trying to start a conversation with them.

Luffy looks at Usopp and nods. “Uh, hey, Nami.”

“Hey,” Usopp says, voice congested.

“Um, Nami, I—”

Nami cuts Luffy off, sighing. “No, let me start, please. I… I’m really stressed and I don’t wanna use that as an excuse, but… everything got to me and you being optimistic annoyed me because I was being pessimistic and I… flipped. I took my anger out on you, and I’m sorry for being an asshole.” She looks at Luffy who stares at her forehead, fixated on her words. “Sorry, Luffy. Oh, and I’m sorry for saying you were stupid. It must be a sore spot for you.”

“It is. Other kids… were mean to me cos I don’t get social cues very well,” Luffy says. He sighs and smiles weakly. “Uh… thanks for the apology. And… sorry for setting you off. I know I can be annoyingly optimistic sometimes, but I just feel like if I let any doubt into my mind… I’ll never find him.” His voice breaks, tears in his eyes. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Nami says, holding out her hand.

Luffy hesitates, before taking her hand and squeezing. “Thanks.”

“And Usopp, sorry for making you cry.”

“Yeah, me too,” Luffy says, grabbing Usopp’s hand.

Usopp goes red, smiling weakly at them both. “Um, thanks. I’m just stressed and seeing you arguing made me upset and… I cried. Thanks for the apology though, guys.”

Nami manages a smile, glad everything has worked out.

By the time Sanji appears with their pancakes, he finds them hugging, and smiles, setting the plate down without saying a word. He knew they would make up.

They always do.


	7. Chapter 7

When Nami wakes up, something doesn’t feel right. She sits up, rubbing at her eyes with one hand and detangling herself from Usopp with the other, and yawns. Once again, she has awoken at dawn, and probably didn’t get more than five hours sleep.

Nami gets up, legs wobbling, and wanders out on deck, trying to work out what feels wrong to her brain. Memories of the argument they had last night don’t help matters, even though she and Luffy and Usopp made up.

She thinks about last night, about how they all staggered to bed after finishing the pancakes Sanji made, and Sanji didn’t even do the washing up first…

Wait a minute.

Nami runs to the edge of the deck, staring out at sea.

The ship is moving, drifting through the ocean.

Oh shit! They forgot to drop anchor last night.

“Shit!” Nami hisses, running for her chest of cartography supplies. In the five hours they were all in bed, they could have drifted miles off course, even with the sails down. How could she forget something so important? They’re following a fucking map, and going to these specific places as quickly as possible is vital, but now they’re probably really far off course. “Fucking hell.”

She spreads her map out on deck and places her compass down, watching the needle spin. It settles on East. Great! They were sailing North West last night, but now the ship is facing a different direction. Just what currents did they drift into during the night? Where the hell are they?

Finally, that settles in for Nami. She… she has no idea where they are. Which port are they closest to? She knows they still have to be on this stretch of ocean, but that’s it. Fucking brilliant.

“Fucking damn it!” Nami yells, running to the ship’s wheel and jerking the Merry into a tight turn to port.

She hears rustling from the bunkroom, and sighs.

“Nami?” Usopp says, wandering out onto the deck, rubbing his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

“We heard yelling,” Luffy says, yawning. “Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay,” Nami says, trying her best to stay calm. “We, we fucking forgot to drop anchor last night, guys. We’re off course by… who fucking knows what?”

Luffy and Usopp glance at each other.

“Oh crap,” Luffy says, hurrying over. He crouches down to look at the map, frowning. “So… there’s no way to tell where we are anymore?”

“Nope. It’s going to take me ages to work out our position, and we might be really far from the next port. Shit, I can’t even put into words how much this pisses me off.”

Usopp sighs, wrapping his arms around himself. “This is just what we need.”

“What’s all the noise about?” Sanji asks, leaving the bunkroom and walking over.

Usopp trembles, and stares at Sanji. “Wait, isn’t it your job to drop the anchor?”

“Huh?” Sanji says, confused. “Can someone fill me in?”

“Oh, Nami just realised we never dropped anchor last night and drifted and now we don’t know where we are or how close we are to the port we were supposed to head for today,” Luffy babbles, swinging his arms and smiling despite the fear hidden behind the expression.

“Oh,” Sanji says, grimacing. “Sorry. It was my fault.”

“Is that all you’re gonna say?” Usopp cries, voice cracking. He glares at Sanji, anger burning in his eyes; it’s so rare to see Usopp angry that all Nami can do is stare. “Sanji, this is all your fault!”

“Whoa, calm down, Usopp,” Luffy says. “I know Sanji was in charge of the anchor, but it’s not like any of us noticed, is it?”

“Luffy’s right,” Nami says, well aware she was being the angry one last night so her attempt to calm Usopp might be seen as hypocritical. “There’s no point blaming—”

“But, but it’s Sanji’s fault!” Usopp splutters. “We’re off course because of you, and you don’t even seem sorry. We might be too late to save Zoro because of you.”

“Hey, don’t say shit like that,” Sanji says, reaching for a cigarette – but Usopp slaps them out of his hand. “What the fuck?!”

“Stop trying to take the moral high ground!” Usopp yells. “You fucked up, you’re always flirting with Nami even though she’s not dating you, you always smok even though it makes me feel sick – you’re a fucking asshole, Sanji!”

“Whoa, easy!” Luffy yelps, grabbing Usopp’s arm before he can do anything stupid.

“Usopp, that’s not called for,” Nami says. “Yeah, this is Sanji’s fault, but that’s not an excuse to shit all over him like this.”

“And I said sorry. What else do you want from me?”

Usopp groans, gritting his teeth. “Ugh, I don’t know! Just apologise properly.”

“I already did. What more do you want from me, Usopp?” Sanji says, and Nami sees the anger bubbling up inside him.

She glances at Luffy, well aware this could get ugly fast. Luffy clings to Usopp, trembling.

“Just… just… you can’t understand what this is doing to us all, Sanji. You’re his friend, but… me and Luffy and Nami are so close to Zoro and it’s messing with us much more than you.”

“But you three aren’t dating,” Sanji says, genuinely confused. “I thought you were just very clingy friends.”

Luffy starts to explain queerplatonic relationships, but doesn’t get to finish. Because Usopp swings his fist and punches Sanji across the face. He can’t hit very hard, but Sanji still stumbles backwards, grabbing at his face.

“What the fuck?!” Sanji cries.

“Usopp!” Nami yells, running to grab Sanji’s arm in case he falls over.

“He was… don’t devalue are relationship like that!” Usopp cries, shaking.

“I wasn’t being a dick. I just didn’t understand!” Sanji yells, about to storm over.

Luffy steps between them, holding his arms out. “Guys, stop fighting. This is getting really dumb.”

When Usopp doesn’t calm down, Nami grabs him by the arm and says, “You’re coming with me.”

And she drags him into the bunkroom, shutting the door behind them.

Usopp rushes to the back of the room, pinning himself to the wall. He trembles, gasping for breath and clutching at his hand, where his knuckles are going red from punching Sanji.

“Usopp, what the hell were you playing at?” Nami says, keeping her voice as firm as she can without shouting.

He flinches. “I, I was just so…”

“Look, just calm down. But, seriously, how could you punch Sanji?”

Usopp stares at her, pressing his back to the wall, and his eyes go wide. She stares back, watching his anger fade away, and realises he is just like her last night: acting on a impulsive wave of anger that soon fades.

“Nami, I…” Usopp’s voice cracks, and he slides to the floor. Tears brim in his eyes, and he covers his face. “I… I’m so sorry!”

He breaks down sobbing, crumpled on the floor of the bunkroom.

“I, I can’t believe I did that… I’m an asshole… will Sanji forgive me for hurting him?” Usopp mumbles, more to himself than her, as his voice trembles with sobs.

Nami sits down beside him, putting a hand on his knee. “Oh, Usopp… you’re really sorry?”

He sniffs, nodding his head. “I, I’m so sorry. I hurt our crewmate… I… Nami, do you hate me?”

“Of course I don’t hate you,” she says. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m pissed off with you for hitting Sanji, but I don’t hate you. We all do stupid things when we’re angry. What’s important is feeling bad, making amends and making sure you don’t ever do it again. as long as you do those things, I’ll forgive you. And I’m sure Sanji will too.”

“Nami… thank you,” Usopp whimpers, sniffling.

And as her partner sobs beside her, Nami just wishes they could all cope with this stress in a less destructive way. At this rate, they’ll have fucking killed each other by the time they find Zoro.

\---

“This was the best we could find, Boss,” one of his captors says from somewhere outside his cell, his words breaking what must be hours of silence.

Zoro twists his hands around, making his wrists click and sighing in relief. But the action rubs the blisters that have started forming on his wrists, and the sigh turns to a wince. All he can smell is his own urine, having pissed himself at least four times since they force fed him a ridiculous amount of water, and Zoro realises that this would have made him want to die of embarrassment a few days ago, but now he can’t find the energy to care. He supposes sleep deprivation and hunger are all his brain can think about right now.

Well, other than the fear. Even when he is alone, anxiety twists in his stomach, and it’s really starting to piss Zoro off. Will he always feel like this, even when he gets out of this place? If he even gets out of this place?

He sighs, eyes burning with overwhelming fatigue, and closes his eyelids. A long time ago, Zoro heard about something that happens to really tired people, and that doctors refer to them as micro sleeps. When you’re really tired, even closing your eyes is enough for your brain to slip into a few seconds of sleep, making it fucking dangerous if the person is operating machines or weapons at the time. And he realises that this has been happening to him on and off the whole time he has been here.

Zoro drops into a quick micro sleep, but wakes up when his knees buckle, subconsciously aware of the risk of being strangled. He yawns, so tired he doesn’t know how to react. At this point, he would rather be knocked out again, as the unconsciousness was more pleasant than being awake. And that must show just how fucked up this whole situation is.

“Well, it’s not what I wanted, but we can’t really afford to be picky,” the leader says, reminding Zoro that the captors are right outside his cell right now. “Come on, then.”

He hears footsteps, and the door creaks open. The three captors walk into the cell, carrying… wait, what are they carrying?

“Look, I told you he’d be confused,” the third pirate says, gesturing to Zoro and laughing.

Trying to get a better look, Zoro focuses his somewhat wobbly vision and stares at the stuff they brought into the cell. He sees a filthy hammer, a large piece of rusted sheet metal and a weird wooden object. It takes his exhausted brain a while to find the memory, and Zoro remembers seeing the wooden object at sporting events, where people spin it and it makes a loud noise as a way to cheer on their team.

Wait a minute. Loud noise?

Oh shit.

“I think Roronoa’s worked us out,” the leader says, dropping the hammer on the ground. He grins. “Did you really think we’d leave you alone after we learned how you freak out at loud noises?”

 _I hoped you would, but I didn’t believe it,_ Zoro thinks, but he doesn’t dare say it.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he says like Zoro replied. “So, we’re just gonna piss you off for a while. We’ll stop if you ask, but… we’ll switch to something else instead. How does some more water boarding sound?”

Zoro flinches, hearing the threat. He understands this all too well. These bastards are planning to torture him with loud noise and wait until he snaps, and then blame him and water board him instead. Given that Zoro would rather have his fingernail ripped out again than be water boarded, he knows he will have to put up with this. He has to. He can’t cope with the water boarding.

But he can cope with loud noises. He’s lived his whole life being exposed to them, and he knows he’ll just have a meltdown and then go back to normal. He can cope with this.

He has to. He would rather die than go through water boarding again.

The leader grins, picking up the hammer. “Okay, let’s begin.”

\---

As the door to the bunkroom shuts, Luffy wanders over to Sanji, who presses his hand to his face, skin red from the punch. He still can’t quite believe Usopp punched Sanji, but he saw it with his own eyes. It happened. And now he has to deal with the aftermath.

Even though he’s trembling and just wants to sit in a corner and stim until he feels better, Luffy puts a hand on Sanji’s arm and says, “Hey, do you wanna sit down?”

Sanji shrugs. “I guess so.”

Luffy wanders over to a pair of chairs, Sanji following behind him. he sits and watches Sanji sit, fascinated by the red mark on his face.

“Um, do you want something for that?”

“Nah, it’s okay. Usopp’s punches are weak as shit, so it won’t bruise that much.” Sanji sighs. “Fuck, how did it all come to this?”

“I don’t know. Sanji, do you hate Usopp now?”

“What?” Sanji says, scoffing. “Of course I don’t. You have to do much worse than that to make me hate you. And I probably would’ve punched him back if you hadn’t stepped in. tempers go wild under stress.”

Luffy sighs. “Yeah, that’s true.” He inhales shakily, bouncing his legs up and down. “Sanji, why’re we falling apart?”

Sanji shrugs his shoulders. “We’re exhausted and stressed. It was bound to happen.”

“But… we need to stay strong,” Luffy says, voice wavering. “If we don’t… we’re never gonna find Zoro.”

He trembles, anxiety building up in his chest, and Luffy feels a lump in his throat. He blinks, tears burning his eyes.

“Sanji…” He looks at Sanji, and his façade shatters, the tears spilling over. “I’m scared!”

And before Sanji has a chance to wonder what the hell Luffy is doing, he lunges closer and wraps his arms around Sanji. He buries his face in Sanji’s chest, clinging to him as sobs wrack his body.

“Shit, Luffy, don’t… cry,” Sanji says, shocked to see Luffy break like this. Clearly unable to think of anything reassuring, he just rubs Luffy’s back.

And Luffy cries and cries, wishing Zoro was here.

\---

Metal clangs against metal, sending hideous, noisy sounds echoing around the cell. Zoro grits his teeth, the sounds seeming to echo around his skull, ripping his aching brain to shreds. He groans, trying to block out the deafening noises and the way the pirates laugh as the leader smacks the hammer against the sheet of metal, the sounds coming in irregular, agonising waves.

For a moment, they stop, but Zoro’s ears ring like his need for silence is taunting him.

He wants to scream, but Zoro forces himself to stay silent. He can cope. He can cope. He can cope.

At least until the wooden rattle goes off right by his ear, pain burning like a needle just stabbed his eardrum. Finally, it all becomes too much for Zoro, and he yelps.

He cries out, lost in pain… and then he doesn’t remember anything.

When he comes back to his senses, he’s trembling and tears leak down his face. Blood leaks from his wrists and ankles, skin torn from fighting against his restraints. His muscles burn, and his head pounds worse than ever.

Did he just have a meltdown?

Zoro pants for breath, realising his captors have gone. At least they didn’t see his meltdown as an act of disobedience and water board him.

Although that’s hardly a consolation when everything hurts and Zoro wants to throw up, needing to stim but unable to move his limbs without pain.

He groans and closes his eyes, wishing he could get out of here.

\---

“Okay, are you ready?” Nami asks, hand wrapped around Usopp’s wrist.

“Not really. But… I haven’t really got a choice, have I?” Usopp says, smiling awkwardly. “Okay, let’s go.”

Nami nods and opens the door, leading him out onto the deck. She spots Luffy and Sanji sat near the front of the ship, Sanji’s face still red and Luffy looking like he’s been crying.

“Guys, we need to sort this out,” she says, pulling Usopp behind her. She turns to Usopp, who ducks his head.

“Um… I’m really sorry I hit you, Sanji,” Usopp says, his eyes red and puffy from crying so much. “I was a jerk. I’m really, really sorry.”

Sanji sighs, standing up. “You don’t have to keep saying it. I heard it the first time. Look, man, I’m pissed that you hit me, but… I get it. We’re all tired, we’re all mad, and anger makes people do stupid stuff. Just don’t hit me again, and we’ll be fine.”

Usopp stares at Sanji, eyes widening. “Really? You forgive me?”

Sanji smirks. “As I told Luffy, it takes more than that to make me hate a person. Trust me, we’re cool. I forgive you.”

A smile spreads across Usopp’s face. “Oh, I’m so glad… thank you, Sanji.”

Nami wanders over to Luffy, and puts her arm around him. He smiles and leans close to her ear, and whispers, “I’m so glad things worked out.”

Nami smiles. “Me too.”

\---

Zoro’s eyes drift closed, his brain still burning from the never ending noise and the meltdown. He wants to sleep, he needs to sleep, and in the moment he forgets about his collar, he drifts into well-needed—

His windpipe closes, and Zoro splutters for breath, waking up. And as his collar digs into his neck, his throat aching from choking himself, he hears his captors laughing.

He groans, his eyes filling with tears.


	8. Chapter 8

Zoro’s eyelids droop, and he can’t remember the last time he kept them open fully. His eyes burn with fatigue, throbbing like he got punched, and he yawns so hard his jaw clicks. His body longs for sleep, but it’s still impossible; if he falls asleep, he will choke himself, either waking up or suffocating in his sleep. so no matter how much he needs to sleep, he can’t.

It has been several days now and other than a few micro sleeps and the time he spent knocked out after being punched (which doesn’t really qualify as sleep, but Zoro is certain he remembers dreaming during the time he was out, suggesting he got a bit of sleep), he hasn’t slept. He is dozens of hours in deficit of sleep, and every part of his body aches with exhaustion.

As he stands there, wobbling on unsteady legs, something occurs to Zoro: is it possible to die from sleep deprivation? He has never heard of it happening, but he supposes it must have to happen after a certain amount of time. After all, his body appears to be shutting down from lack of sleep, so after a few more days, it might actually kill him. Do his captors care? Probably not.

“ _Zoro…”_

He jumps, straining his sore shoulder and the scabbing wounds on his back. Did someone just say his name?

Zoro turns his head as much as he can with the collar this tight, but he can’t see anyone else.

Why would he even think that? The only way into this cell is through the door, which creaks so loudly it’s obvious when someone is entering. What is going on with him?

But… he really thought he heard someone speak.

“ _Zoro…”_

There it is again! Zoro straightens up as much as he can, straining to hear it. He doesn’t recognise the voice, but he definitely heard it. What the fuck is going on? There is nobody here.

So why can he hear a voice?

He groans, screwing his eyes up. His ears still ring from the hideously loud noise his captors put him through yesterday, but he can still make out sounds such as the constant drips of water from the ceiling and his captors doing whatever they’re doing at a certain distance from the door. There isn’t anything wrong with his hearing, so he must really be hearing this voice.

But who is it? And where is it coming from?

“ _Zoro… Talk to me…”_

It’s barely above a whisper, soft like they talk to him from a distance but still clear like they’re whispering right in his ear. It doesn’t sound like any speech Zoro has ever heard before. Something isn’t right.

Wait a moment…

Could this be a hallucination? Zoro has heard of people hearing voices, usually a symptom of mental illnesses. But… could it also happen to someone suffering from severe sleep deprivation? After all, his brain isn’t working properly, so this sort of malfunction doesn’t seem too out there.

Yeah, that has to be it. The voice has to be an auditory hallucination. Zoro grits his jaw, trying to ignore the voice that continues to say his name.

Never, in his entire life, has had had hallucinations. So for this to be happening now… yeah, he is in a horrific state.

How much longer does he have before he dies?

\---

“Good morning, Roronoa Zoro!” the leader of his three captors says, wandering into his cell and twirling the ring of keys around his finger.

Zoro stares at them, watching the three men file in the room. Dread builds up inside of him, and he flinches when he notices one of them keeps his hands behind his back, holding something. Just what are they going to do today?

“Show him what you’ve got,” the leader says to the third pirate, the one who keeps something hidden behind him.

“Sure thing, Boss,” he says, grinning.

And he holds Zoro’s sword out in front of him. Zoro’s eyes track the badly scratched blade, now coated in dry, congealed blood. Zoro’s blood.

Part of him wants to yell, but he keeps silent. To be honest, he still isn’t sure if he actually can speak more than a couple of words after screaming so much.

“Look, he’s scared!” the second captor says, laughing.

He might not feel up to shouting, but Zoro glares at him. It obviously isn’t very threatening, because the bastard just laughs harder.

“So…” the leader says, taking the sword and wandering over to Zoro. He holds it up to Zoro’s neck, pressing it to the skin just below his collar. He digs it in hard enough to hurt, but not enough to break the skin. “How does it feel to see your precious sword covered in your own blood?” Still keeping the sword in place, he locates one of the wounds from yesterday on Zoro’s arm and prods the thin scab. “Ah, healing nicely. I bet they’re itching pretty badly, right, Roronoa?”

He presses the sword harder, and it breaks the skin, a thin line of blood trickling down his neck. The pressure builds up, and Zoro’s breathing hisses, his windup getting squashed. Eventually, he has no choice but to gasp out, “Y-Yes…”

“Yeah, I thought so,” the leader says, releasing the pressure and letting Zoro breathe again. “Well, there’s something I can do about that.”

Zoro doesn’t even get a chance to take a deep breath before the man has taken Zoro’s sword, pressed it against the scab and sliced it open. He gasps, his wound reopening and blood running down his arm.

“See, now you’re distracted from the itching.”

All too soon, he has taken the bloody blade and sliced open all of Zoro’s healing wounds, sending blood leaking across his skin. Zoro groans and grits his jaw, not sure if he should be grateful that this doesn’t hurt nearly as badly as it did when they caused these wounds, or angry that he’s getting so passive he can’t even bring himself to scream.

When he’s finally finished, the leader holds the sword up to Zoro’s face, blood glistening on the blade. He lets it drift towards Zoro’s face, and Zoro flinches.

The leader laughs, flicking the sword again and howling when Zoro flinches back.

“Look at you, Roronoa,” he says. “A swordsman flinching at a fucking sword? You’re pathetic.”

Zoro doesn’t want to acknowledge the bastard, but part of his mind knows he is correct. He really is beginning to flinch whenever he sees a blade. And… if he ends up scared of swords, how can he call himself a swordsman? Yeah, he is pathetic.

“Anyway, if you’re quite finished being a pathetic piece of shit, there’s just one more thing I wanna do before we leave you for a bit. Ready?”

He doesn’t give Zoro the chance to answer (and probably wouldn’t listen even if he did), taking a step backwards. The leader swings the sword straight at Zoro’s head, and he screws his eyes up on reflex. But he feels it.

The tip of the sword gouges into Zoro’s forehead, tearing a three inch gash across his forehead before being flung to the floor. Pain explodes through his head, blood pouring from the cut. Head wounds always bleed a lot, explaining why the blood has already reached his lips when he opens his eyes.

The moment he opens them, blood trickles into his eyes, blinding him. Zoro finally cries out from the pain, and blood runs into his mouth. He blinks and blinks, trying to get rid of the blood that burns his eyes and blurs his vision, barely noticing when the foul liquid coats his tongue.

Zoro swallows the mouthful of blood, and nausea begins to bubble in his stomach. he groans, and his overactive gag reflex sends him retching. His eyes water and his vision finally clears in time for Zoro to retch again and his mouth fill with vomit. It spills from his lips, mingling with the blood that runs down his face, and he gasps, unable to taste anything but stomach acid and blood.

He doesn’t even notice when the captors leave, keeping his eyes screwed up to stop the blood running into them and spitting in a hope to get the foul taste out of his mouth.

It doesn’t work.

\---

As Usopp wanders towards the kitchen, his heart races even faster than usual. He knows he apologised to Sanji last night and they made up, but things still feel… awkward. Which he supposes is normal; why should things go back to normal after someone punches his friend across the face?

Nami told him it’s important to make amends after hurting someone, but he doesn’t really know how to do that. in the end, he could only think of one thing he can do to show Sanji that his apology was sincere: he will go to the kitchen and insist Sanji takes the day off cooking, letting him take over.

And even though he thinks his plan will work and he’s sure Sanji isn’t mad at him anymore, he still can’t get his anxiety to settle down. He wishes the fight last night never happened, but it did. And he has to deal with the mess he made.

Usopp glances across the deck and spots Luffy at the ship’s wheel, taking a turn at navigating. None of them are very good compared to Nami, but they know enough to keep the ship on track for Nami to take a break. Which explains why Nami currently slumps on a futon in the bunk room, fast asleep.

Making sure nobody spots him, he reaches the kitchen door and knocks.

“What?” Sanji calls.

Usopp opens the door, and just watches Sanji for a few seconds. Sanji always manages to look so cool when he cooks, and he dices vegatables with incredible skill.

“Hi, Sanji,” Usopp says, voice weaker than he wanted.

“Oh, hi, Usopp,” Sanji says without looking up. “What do you want?”

“Well, I was thinking of ways to make up for yesterday—”

“You already apologised, I forgave you and we’re moving on. What else is there do to?”

“I know, but…” Usopp sighs. “I wanna make it up to you. And I thought… you deserve a break from cooking. Why not have a rest and let me take over for today?”

Without even hesitating, Sanji says, “No.”

“Wh-What?” Usopp splutters.

“Look, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the offer and all,” Sanji says. “And I’m not pissed off with you. it’s just… this is my kithen, and I’m in charge of the cooking. So… yeah, I’m not leaving.”

“Oh…”

As Usopp turns to leave, Sanji clears his throat, and he spins back around,

Sanji smirks at him, and tosses a potato at him. Usopp scrabbles to catch it, clutching it to his chest.

“What the…?”

“You can’t take over, but you can help me out. I need some vegetables chopped. Wanna be my assistant?”

Usopp stares at Sanji, processing those words and the smirk on his face, and grins. “Of, of course! I can do that!”

And he grabs a knife and starts chopping, unable to keep a smile off of his face. Sanji really has forgiven him.

\---

When his captors return, the bleeding has finally stopped. The wound on his forehead gapes open, stinging whenever he moves his eyebrows. His face is covered in congealing blood, his eyelashes gumming together with sticky blood whenever he closes his eyes, and the taste of blood coats his tongue and lips. His open wounds throb, and Zoro thinks the pain might be the only thing keeping him conscious.

“You look a mess, Roronoa,” the second pirate says.

Zoro wants to snap at him (after all, it is their fucking fault he is in such a state), but he hasn’t got the energy. He lets out a wheezy sigh, trying to keep his knees from buckling.

“Feeling any better?” the third pirate says.

Zoro glares at him.

“You know how you’ve become a pathetic piece of shit who’s scared of your own sword?” the leader says, smirking. “Well, I was thinking. If you ever get out of this place alive, you probably won’t ever be able to be a swordsman again. The thing is, I don’t like that ‘probably’. So I thought of a way to make it definite. You can’t be a swordsman if your dominant arm doesn’t move properly.”

And as Zoro tries to process his words, he reveals a large, wooden mallet. Zoro stares, forcing his dry mouth to swallow.

“Okay, pin his upper arm to the wall.”

“Yes, Boss.”

The two subordinates rush Zoro, one pressing his shoulder to the wall and the other doing the same to his elbow. It twists his arm at an unnatural angle, but Zoro doesn’t care. because the leader approaches him and places the flat surface of the mallet against his forearm.

He pulls it back, raising the mallet above his head, and then swings it down.

Wood slams against his arm, bone crunching beneath skin. Zoro grunts, gritting his teeth when the mallet hits him again, even harder this time. The rough wood tears a small gash in his skin, but Zoro barely feels it. His bones crunch, fracturing under the force, and Zoro hisses in pain.

Again and again, the mallet smashes into his arm, cracking his bones and sending pain shooting up his arm. When he finally stops, Zoro’s bones appear distorted beneath his skin, bulging in the wrong places. Bruises and swelling pattern his skin, blood oozing from a small cut.

He gasps, wanting to throw up, but the nausea won’t come.

“Okay, now unlock his wrist.”

“Are you sure, Boss?”

“Of course I’m fucking sure. Just do it!”

As the leader smacks the second pirate across the head, the third takes the ring of keys and unlocks Zoro’s wrist cuff. His hand slides through the cuff and Zoro doesn’t have the strength to keep his arm in the air. His arm falls to his side, blood rushing to his fingertips and making them tingle.

But he doesn’t have long to enjoy the sensation of his hand being free, because his arm gets pinned to the wall at his hand and elbow, broken forearm screaming with pain as it presses against the wall, and the leader lines the mallet up with his wrist.

Now Zoro sees what the leader meant. There are too many bones in the wrist, and breaking them will make certain Zoro’s wrist will never have the same range of movement again. He’ll probably still be able to wield a sword (if he even wants to), but he’ll never be able to call himself a great swordsman.

The mallet smashes into Zoro’s wrist, and he cries out, bones shattering and nerve pain shooting up his arm.

Finally, the pain overwhelms him, and his vision goes black around the edges. As the pirates laugh and the mallet smashes into his wrist yet again, Zoro passes out…

Only to wake up to freezing water being poured over his head. Zoro yelps in shock, eyes snapping open in time to register another type of pain. The wound on his forehead burns like someone set it on fire, and his eyes stream with tears when the water dribbles into them. The water cascades down his body, daggers of pain ripping into his open wounds, and Zoro cries out again, voice cracking.

When water dribbles into his mouth, salt burns his tongue. And then he understands why everything burns. They just tipped sea water over his head.

Zoro coughs and spits out the sea water, his gag reflex kicking in. as he throws up, all he can feel is pain, and all he can hear is his heart pounding in his ears.


	9. Chapter 9

In the few days they have been stuck in this awful situation, Nami has noticed something: everyone’s sleep cycles have shifted. Even with the severe sleep deprivation, most of them can’t fall asleep when they all head to bed (at some time between 10pm and 11pm), leading to lots of tossing and turning and arguing as they long to fall asleep but just aren’t sleepy. And no matter how little sleep they get, all of them stir at sunrise (around 4am) and even Luffy, the groggiest of the four of them, will bolt out of bed and demand they resume their search for Zoro. And at various points during the day, each of them crash from exhaustion, only to be wide awake when night falls. It’s an infuriating pattern.

Today is no exception. Luffy was the first out of bed at sunrise, stumbling out onto the deck and helping Nami hoist the sails, but he started getting very, very droopy at around 6am.

“Luffy, just go to bed,” Sanji had said, watching Luffy’s head nod and his eyelids droop as he got closer and closer to sleeping.

And Luffy didn’t argue, simply stumbling back into the bunkroom and falling asleep the moment he hit the futon. Nami followed him and slipped off his shoes and covered him with a blanket, sighing fondly.

The only problem with these daytime naps is it’s almost impossible to get the sleeping person up again. Sanji insists they all eat three meals a day (even if those meals are only toast or something really light), and Nami has to agree. But, including herself in this, Luffy is by far the hardest to wake up.

At 8am, moments after Sanji has set the table for breakfast (a groggy Usopp looks at the spread of poached eggs and grilled fish, licking his lips), he glances and Nami and they nod.

“Operation: Wake Up Luffy, huh?” Usopp says, glancing at the food.

Nami nods. “Yeah. And we’ll need your help too, so come on.”

Sighing, Usopp follows Nami and Sanji into the bunkroom. In the two hours since he fell asleep, Luffy has rolled onto his stomach, head turned to the side and his open mouth dribbling all over his pillow. It’s pretty gross, but something about Luffy makes everything he does look adorable.

Sanji bites down on his unlit cigarette, grimacing. “Okay, here we go.”

Now, Usopp’s techniques at waking Luffy up are the kindest, but rarely work; it’s sweet to see him shake Luffy gently and say his name, but Luffy doesn’t respond. Nami, on the other hand, finds her technique the best of all.

She stands over Luffy, and begins prodding him in the side with his foot. Not hard enough to hurt, but Luffy does grunt when she hooks her foot under his chest and rolls him onto his back. His head lolls and he snores. In this position, Nami kneels down and pinches Luffy’s nose.

And only a few seconds later, Luffy splutters and wakes up, confused. “Nami! What the fuck?!”

“And… he’s awake,” Nami says, grinning.

Luffy pouts, at least until Usopp says, “Come on, Luffy. Let’s eat breakfast.”

At which point he perks up and hurtles out of the bunkroom.

Nami glances at Sanji and he rolls his eyes. Luffy is probably the weirdest person she has ever known.

\---

Trying to ignore the nausea that eats away at his full stomach, Usopp stands by the ships’ wheel, steering the ship towards their next destination. Nami kneels on the deck a few feet away, her map spread across the floor and her list of ports in her hand. She frowns, tracing the wrong end of her pencil across the thick paper, and he wants to know what’s going on in that brain of hers.

His nausea only gets worse; flicking your eyes between a compass in the foreground and the distance can screw with your balance at the best of times. But when he’s already feeling quite sick, Usopp closes his eyes for a second, wincing.

“How could I be so fucking stupid?” Nami mutters, and she smacks her hands against the deck.

Usopp flinches and opens his eyes. Nami braces her hands against the deck and looks up, anger burning behind her eyes. Please say this won’t cause another argument, he thinks, staring down at his bruised hand. There have been too many arguments already.

“Uh… what do you mean?” he asks, voice tentative.

Nami’s head snaps up and she stares at him. “Huh? Oh, it’s just… shit… I fucked up really badly, Usopp.”

“What?” he says, dropping to his knees and crawling closer (his stomach lurches and Usopp swallows hard). “What happened?”

Clenching her hands into trembling fists, Nami takes in a shuddering breath. “How did I miss this?”

Usopp stares at her, unsure how to help. How can he do anything when she won’t say what is wrong?

Across the deck, Luffy slumps in a chair, head nodding as he drifts closer to falling asleep. at least, he was until Nami smacked her hands into the deck; now, Luffy sits up, rubbing his eyes.

“Huh, what’s going on?” he asks, wandering over and muffling a yawn behind his hand.

“I dunno,” Usopp says.

“Nami?” Luffy says, laying a cautious hand on her back “What’s wrong?”

Nami exhales slowly, and she switches back on again. She glances at them both, sighing. “Sorry. I was just… so mad at myself…”

“Well, can you tell us what’s the matter?” Luffy asks, back to his helpful self despite being half asleep. “We might be able to help.”

“You won’t be,” she mutters.

Luffy pats her back. “But you should still say it.”

Nami glances at him, smiling weakly. “Okay, you win. It’s just… I noticed something on the map and I’m fucking kicking myself for missing it earlier.”

“What did you find?” Usopp asks, leaning closer to the map.

“Here,” Nami says. She picks up her pencil and taps it against a spot on the map; it shows a bay surrounded by jagged cliffs, but with one gap you could probably fit a ship through. “It’s… an abandoned pirate base.”

“Oh, cool!” Luffy says.

Sighing, Nami continues. “Like, long abandoned, at least eighty years. Back when I was with… Arlong, I heard old stories about how a gang of pirates used to run a black market from this place, mainly ‘cause it’s so easy to guard the only entrance. But… they were all caught and executed, and the place fell into ruin. But… it’s still there. And I was just thinking…”

Usopp gasps, catching the thought just before Nami speaks. “Oh… you mean…?”

She nods. “Yeah. could be the perfect place for our kidnappers to be hiding.”

Luffy gasps even louder, a huge grin breaking across his face. “Wow! You mean… oh, Nami, you’re so smart!”

“I’m really not,” she mutters. “I got so caught up listing ports to check, but I never thought to look for hidden caves and places like this. if I saw this on Tuesday, we could’ve…”

“No, don’t think like that!” Usopp says. he wraps Nami in a tight hug, rubbing her back. “This isn’t your fault. Besides, we can go there next, right?”

“Yeah!” Luffy cries. “We can check it out. Come on, let’s head to this base!”

Nami glances at Luffy, and Usopp reads her expression. She obviously got so caught up in blaming herself that Nami forgot the chances of finding Zoro wherever they go are slim. Just like all the other times, they will probably fail. But… they have to try.

“It’s probably a dead end,” Nami says. “But… we should look. It’s worth a try.”

Luffy laughs and tackles them both, wrapping his arms around his partners and joining the hug. It’s hard, but he has to stay optimistic. He has to be like Luffy.

\---

His skin crackles, the slightest thing hurting. The breeze blowing against his leg hairs feels like being stung by insects. The voices of his crewmates burrow into his ears, making his brain ache. He wants to open his mouth and speak, but his words are gone.

Luffy groans and flaps his hands so hard his wrists click. Oh shit…

Is he about to have a meltdown?

He used to have them loads as a kid, but ever since becoming a pirate, Luffy hasn’t had a meltdown. But… he’s about to have one now. Damn it.

Sometimes, he can calm himself down before it happens, but not this time. His emotions have been going haywire for days, and the sleep deprivation just makes everything worse. Luffy takes in a shaky breath, and he hunches forwards. It’s going to happen. But he doesn’t want the others to see this.

As quickly as he can, Luffy sneaks past Usopp (steering the ship) and Nami (nearly falling asleep in a chair) and heads for the bunkroom, hoping Sanji (stood at the back of the ship, smoking) won’t turn around. Once inside, he shuts the door… and falls apart.

Luffy kicks off his shoes, pulls off his hat and collapses onto his futon. He clenches tight firsts and burrows his face into the pillow, and sobs. Once the tears start flowing, he can’t stop them. As he sobs, Luffy rocks himself from side to side, and punches the mattress. He punches and punches and sobs and sobs, and all he can think about is how all his senses are on fire and he can’t cope but he’s the captain and he has to be strong and he just wants Zoro---

When it finally ends, he’s left trembling, skin covered in sweat. Luffy just lies there, sniffling and wiping his eyes, hating this weak, shaky, nonverbal state he gets left in after a meltdown.

He eventually falls asleep, and only then does the horrible overload end.

\---

When Luffy comes out of the bunkroom, Sanji stares at him. Luffy, his captain, has red, puffy eyes from sobbing and walks with a stilted frame, his head bowed. Now, Luffy already looks like shit from his sleep deprivation and worry, but… he’s never seen Luffy look like _this_.

Still, he shakes his head and calls, “Okay, everyone get to the table. And everyone needs to eat something.”

Sanji hurries into the kitchen and carries out the large plates of food he has spent all afternoon preparing, and finds Luffy, Nami and Usopp sat around the table. Usopp and Nami stare at Luffy, who bounces his legs under the table, avoiding looking at anyone.

He sets the table and takes a seat himself, and says, “Tuck in, guys.”

“Thanks, Sanji,” Usopp says. he looks a bit queasy (his skin has a sallow appearance to it), but Usopp piles his plate with food and tucks in.

Beside him, Nami puts food on her plate with reluctance, and looks up when she realises she is being stared at. “I don’t mean to be rude, Sanji, but… I’m really not hungry.”

“I understand, my darling,” Sanji says, smiling. “But you need to eat something. How about something simple, like some salad?” he adds, pointing to the dish of salad he prepared alongside the meat and fish.

“Deal,” Nami says, giving him a weak grin.

But then Sanji looks at Luffy. His captain has begun to eat, but just does everything so _slowly_ , like even being upright is an immense effort. He knows Luffy is tired, but what caused this sudden change.

“Hey, Luffy, are you okay?” Usopp asks, beating Sanji to it.

Luffy looks up, eyes glassy. “Oh…” he mumbles, voice shaking like the simple action is difficult. “Uh… just… tired.”

Of course, that isn’t a lie, but it doesn’t seem like the whole story, either. Something happened this afternoon, something Luffy is hiding from them all. But he probably shouldn’t pry, at least, not now.

And it turns out that Luffy is far more tired than they thought. As the others eat, Luffy rests his chin on his hand, his eyelids flickering… and he falls asleep, slumping sideways against Usopp. He snores softly, head nodding against Usopp’s shoulder.

“Whoa, you really are tired,” Nami says.

“I don’t think he’s waking up any time soon,” Sanji says. “Hey Usopp, help me carry him to the bunkroom.”

His queasiness more obvious now, Usopp nods. “Oh, sure.”

As Nami watches, Sanji and Usopp sling Luffy’s arms across their shoulders and each grab one of his legs at the knee, hoisting him into the air between them. They stumble to the bunkroom and plonk Luffy on his bed, and he barely stirs the entire time.

Usopp kneels down to cover Luffy with a blanket, but stops. “Sanji, look at the futon.”

He does what Usopp said, and his eyes track the tangled blankets and damp patches all over the pillow. Just what did Luffy do in here?

“We seriously need to talk to him when he wakes up,” Sanji says, and Usopp nods.

Seriously, what is wrong with him?

\---

After dinner has finally finished, Sanji takes the dishes into the kitchen for the washing up, declining offers of help from Nami. He starts scrubbing the dishes, but then he hears thundering footsteps outside the kitchen.

And then… someone retches.

Sanji drops the things he was holding and runs outside just he hears another loud retch. He finds Usopp slumped against the railings, leaning his head over the side of the ship. Usopp retches again, letting out a wet belch, and vomit spills from his mouth.

“What was that – oh fuck!” Nami yelps, abandoning the ship’s wheel and hurtling over to Usopp. She wraps her arm around Usopp’s waist, helping him stay on his feet, and starts stroking his hair. “Oh, Usopp…”

“Shit!” Sanji says, also dashing over. He puts his hand on Usopp’s back, rubbing in circles as his friend brings up the contents of his stomach. “Shit…”

Usopp shudders for breath, eyes watering with effort and his lips and chin covered in saliva and stomach acid. He trembles with each retch, gripping the railing so hard his knuckles so white.

When he is left only dry heaving, Usopp hangs his head, legs wobbling with the effort of keeping himself upright.

“Come on, let’s sit you down,” Sanji says, helping Usopp turn around and easing him to the deck.

Nami kneels beside Usopp, letting him slump against her. Sanji runs into the kitchen and grabs a load of tissues and a glass of water, before returning. He passes Nami the tissues and she helps Usopp clean his face, and Sanji hands him the glass.

“Take small sips,” he says.

Usopp does as he says, grimacing. “Sorry for… wasting food…”

“What? Don’t be fucking stupid,” Sanji says. “You’ve been feeling sick all day, right? This was bound to happen eventually.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Nami says. “Are you feeling better now?”

“A bit,” Usopp whispers. “Thanks, guys.”

“No problem,” Nami says, kissing his forehead.

\---

“It was… a meltdown,” Luffy mumbles. He sits up in bed, rocking himself back and forth.

After sleeping for five hours, Luffy is finally awake. And after they rushed into the bunkroom to ask why he had been acting so weird at dinner, that was his answer.

“A meltdown?” Sanji says.

Luffy nods. “Yeah… everything… overwhelmed me… I cried and… broke… and now I’m just… so tired. Did I… worry you?”

“A bit, yeah,” Usopp says, squeezing his hand. “But it’s okay.”

“Yeah, you can’t help it,” Nami says. “I’m just glad you’re feeling better.”

“Me too,” Sanji says, smirking. “And you’ll be back to your Luffy-ish self tomorrow, won’t you?”

Luffy gives them a weak smile. “Yeah… thanks.”

With that, Luffy starts to drift off again. They let him, and Nami covers him with a blanket as he lies down. Usopp flops down beside him, still holding his hand.

“You should sleep too,” Sanji says. “Puking takes a lot out of you.”

Usopp smiles groggily. “You sure?”

“Yeah, go to sleep,” Nami says. “Just feel better soon.”

And it doesn’t take Usopp much longer to nod off. With those two out like lights, Sanji and Nami head out on deck. It’s nearly 10pm, but the sun hasn’t completely set yet.

“I guess I’ll navigate a bit longer,” Nami says, but she yawns.

“No, I insist you go to bed, my darling,” Sanji says. “I can cover for you until nightfall.”

“Oh… if you’re sure, then… thanks,” she says, smiling.

Hoping he didn’t blush, Sanji bows to her. “Okay, I can do that.”

And Nami wanders into the bunkroom, leaving Sanji alone on deck. As he promised, he heads to the ship’s wheel, watching the compass in the dimming light to keep them on course for their new destination (he heard something about a pirate base, but he needs the full story).

As he steers the ship, Sanji lights a cigarette and smokes, watching the setting sun. it’s beautiful, but he doesn’t really care. And with nothing else to think about, his thoughts drift to the topic he keeps trying to push to the back of his mind: Zoro.

Just what has happened to him? Is Zoro even still alive? Is he being tortured? Did he get sold into slavery? Is he slowly dying somewhere, all alone—

 _Stop it!_ Sanji thinks, longing for the thoughts to fuck off, but they just swirl around his head. _Fucking stop it!_

And he takes his cigarette and presses the end against his arm. His flesh burns beneath it and Sanji hisses, pain shooting up his arm. When he pulls it away, a white burn stands out on his arm, surrounded by reddening skin. His eyes water from the pain, but he totally isn’t crying.

 _Don’t be dead, you bastard,_ he thinks. _Please, don’t be dead._


	10. Chapter 10

Zoro twitches his forefinger and pain shoots through his broken wrist and up his arm, making him gag. He sighs, wondering why he even thought that was a good idea. After his forearm and wrist were smashed so hard his bones shattered and splintered and cracked, he can barely move his fingers and thumb without horrific pains going up his arm. He can’t move his wrist at all, so swollen that the wrist cuff has become painfully tight, almost cutting off the circulation to his hand.

He groans, closing his eyes for a few seconds. Pain screams inside his head, either from the sleep deprivation or the pain or the dehydration or possibly a combination of the three, his body yelling at him in a desperate attempt to get him to do something or he will die. Which Zoro finds morbidly amusing, given that he literally can’t do anything his brain keeps screaming for, no matter how much he needs it.

In the night, he had to piss himself again, and his wet underpants stick to and chafe his thighs and genitals. It feels disgusting, but there’s nothing he can do about it. And if he complains, Zoro has a feeling that his captors’ solution will involve stripping him naked. And if that is the alternative, he can put up with his.

The need for sleep gets stronger with every passing second, and every few moments Zoro’s body forces him to yawn, the action so powerful he nearly dislocates his jaw. But it doesn’t help, and he ends up yawning seconds later. Seriously, how long has he got before the lack of sleep kills him?

The thing is, despite the odd suicidal thoughts that flicker through Zoro’s brain, he doesn’t want to die. Especially not here, alone and in a humiliating and agonising situation. He was told his crew are dead, but he doesn’t believe them (although a part of his brain keeps saying it’s true), and Zoro doesn’t want to die before finding them again. Although it’s not like he has any choice.

And to make his situation even worse, the hallucinations are back. Every few minutes or so, Zoro hears voices, whispering to him and each other, and he struggles to hear exactly what they say. He knows they are hallucinations, but as time goes by, Zoro realises these voices are the only company he has got. And if that isn’t fucking depressing, he doesn’t know what is.

He yawns again, inhaling so hard that it strains the scabs on his back, and Zoro winces. The gashes on his back from being whipped took ages to scab over, and he doesn’t want them to rip open, especially not because of a fucking yawn.

Zoro is in such a weakened state that the simple act of yawning leaves him breathless, his rapidly palpitating heart racing even faster. For a few seconds, he wonders if he might go into heart failure, but it always goes back to normal. Usually in time for another fucking yawn.

Outside his cell, he hears footsteps approaching, and Zoro groans. Great.

What have these bastards got in store for him today?

\---

When Luffy wakes up, it feels like someone has lifted a weight from his throbbing head, and he yawns. He… he feels back to normal. After the meltdown yesterday, he immediately fell into a shutdown, and he can’t really remember much of what happened. All he really knows is that he could barely respond when spoken to and everything felt fuzzy and it was like he was trapped inside his own head. He hates meltdowns, but shutdowns are pretty awful too.

He remembers giving a brief explanation of what happened, but it wasn’t enough. He wants to explain to his crew, to his partners and his friend, just what happened to him.

Everyone wakes up around the same time, and Usopp smiles when he notices Luffy sat up in bed.

“Morning, Luffy. Feeling better?”

“A lot, thanks,” Luffy says, glad to be able to talk properly again. “Uh, guys?” he adds, glancing at Nami and up at Sanji, “can I talk about last night with you at breakfast?”

“Sure thing,” Sanji says.

“Oh, Usopp, are you feeling better?” Nami asks as the three of them fling back the blankets on their futons, getting to their feet.

Luffy frowns. “Wait, what was wrong with Usopp?”

“Oh, I just felt really sick and threw up,” he says awkwardly. “But I’m much better today.”

“That’s good,” Luffy says, giving Usopp a quick hug.

For a moment, everything seems normal. Just him and his crew waking up in the morning, ready for an adventure.

But that doesn’t last long, for Luffy’s fatigue punches him across the face and he misses Zoro so much it hurts and anxiety ties his guts into knots… and everything is awful again.

Soon, Luffy sits at the table out on deck, tucking into his breakfast. Once he’s swallowed his mouthful, he says, “So… yesterday… I said it was a meltdown, right?”

Sanji nods. “Yeah, and something about being overwhelmed and everything being too much.”

“Is it an autism thing?” Usopp asks.

“Yeah, basically. When my senses or emotions overload me, it’s like alarms go off in my brain and… I can’t cope anymore. Mine are basically curling up in a ball and crying and punching the floor below me. I usually try to be on a bed when it happens, but I’ve hurt my hand pretty badly when I’ve had meltdowns on stone floor.”

“Ouch,” Usopp says, wincing. “Do they last long?”

He shrugs. “Anywhere between five minutes and half an hour. No idea how long yesterday’s one was, cos I fell asleep right afterwards. And then I had a shutdown.”

“A shutdown?” Nami says. “Is that similar to a meltdown?”

“Uh huh. Meltdowns are, like, it all exploding out of you. shutdowns are more like… internalising it all. You close in on yourself, find it harder to talk and can barely focus on anything. That’s why I was such a zombie last night at dinner.”

“We did wonder,” Sanji says. “Do you remember falling asleep at the table?”

Luffy chuckles awkwardly. “Um, yeah. They make me sleepy. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise,” Usopp says, putting his arm around Luffy. “We’re just glad you’re feeling better.”

Nami reaches for Luffy’s hand and gives it a squeeze. “Yeah. And thanks for trusting us enough to tell us.”

Luffy smiles. “No problem.”

But his smile fades when he remembers Zoro is autistic, and he just hopes whatever Zoro’s going through isn’t giving him meltdowns and shutdowns too.

\---

The door to his cell swings open, and the three captors saunter into the room like they’re here on a normal, friendly visit. One of them carries Zoro’s bloodstained, damaged sword, whilst the leader holds a large, clunky instant camera, the sort the Marines take wanted photos with.

The camera piques his interest, but Zoro can’t take his eyes off of his sword. He doesn’t want to admit it, he doesn’t even want to think about it, but staring at the sword makes his palpitations worse and nausea churns in his empty stomach, and part of Zoro knows he’s getting terrified of swords and… How can he call himself a swordsman when just looking at a sword makes him want to puke with fear? He’s pathetic.

“Morning, Roronoa,” the leader says, dangling the camera by its thick, leather strap. “Oh dear, looks like someone had another accident in the night.”

Zoro ignores their laughter, and stops staring at the sword. He wants to kill them all so badly, but… a bigger part of him just wants to run away. Seriously, he’s so pathetic.

“Anyway, you’re probably wondering why I’ve got a camera. Well, we want to take some photos of you.”

“Fuck off…” Zoro mutters, but his voice is weak and lacking the venom to sound like anything other than a pathetic gasp.

“Now now, that’s not very nice,” he says. “Listen, Roronoa, I’ll make a deal with you. if you refuse to play along, I’ll knock you out and take the photos while you’re out cold. But if you’re a good boy and let us take them without a fight… well, do you remember what I told you about Straw Hat?”

Zoro’s droopy eyes widen, and the leader grins.

“Yeah, that got your attention. So behave yourself, and I’ll tell you what Straw Hat said before he died.”

Before he can stop himself, Zoro lets out a gasp. They’re really going to tell Zoro the thing he screamed about until he could barely speak? They’re going to say what Luffy said? He still (mostly) believes that Luffy is alive, but… the information he gets could be what tells him once and for all if his captain, his partner, is really dead or they’re just lying to him. He doesn’t mean to make such a vulnerable sound, but in that moment, it’s all he can manage.

And then the third pirate kicks him in the chest, and he splutters, winded. Zoro gasps for breath, his intercostals aching and his lungs burning.

“Shut up,” he says, and he holds a fist up to Zoro’s face. When Zoro flinches, he laughs. “Pathetic.”

“So, do we have a deal?” the leader asks.

“Y-Yeah,” Zoro mumbles.

“Good boy. Men, can you get me some light on the subject?”

“Yes, Boss.”

Soon, the cell has been illuminated in candlelight, bright enough for anything to actually show up on the photos.

And Zoro just has to stand there as he takes photo after photo. For some photographs, the leader steps right to the back of the cell to get Zoro’s whole body in the shot, including the chains. Others, he comes right up to Zoro, manually zooming in on his face, then his torso, then the wounds that litter his arms and finally the awful stab wound in his leg. Each time he presses the button, the flash blinds Zoro, bright lights floating in his vision several minutes later.

Finally, the bastard seems satisfied by the photos he took, carefully slipping the stack of photos into the bag slung across his shoulder.

“Great, these are perfect. Thanks, Roronoa.” He turns to leave, but then stops, looking at Zoro over his shoulder. “Oh, I almost forgot. So, just before we killed him, Straw Hat said he hates you, he regrets ever working with you and that you’d be better off dead. Bye.”

And he and the others leave the room, leaving Zoro alone in his cell.

He plays those words through his mind again and again. Luffy… spoke about him like that?

No, there’s no way. They’re lying. They have to be. Luffy would never say anything like that.

He knows it’s all bullshit, that the leader is lying to him to fuck with him, but he can’t get it out of his head. Is it working?

It’s all a load of shit. It’s a lie. Luffy is alive. Luffy would never speak like that. They’re lying. Luffy is alive.

It runs through his head again and again, thoughts flittering through his mind so fast he can’t keep track of them.

All Zoro really knows is it’s getting harder and harder to breathe, his aching chest getting tight. His heart beats faster and faster, and he can’t catch his breath. What is happening to him?

He knows it’s a lie, so why is he freaking out?

Why can’t he calm down?

He doesn’t know why. But he can’t. The panic gets worse and worse, until all Zoro can do is gasp for breath, his heart pounding in his chest and fear knotting his guts and he’s so fucking scared and he doesn’t know how to breathe…

Is this a panic attack? Why is this happening to him?

He’s so scared.

Why won’t it stop?

Breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathebreathebreathebreathe—

Zoro pukes, still heaving for breaths that won’t come, and everything hurts so much and his head is swimming and he’s so fucking scared…

He’s pathetic. He hates himself. He wants to die.


	11. Chapter 11

Overwhelming terror crashes through him, crushing his chest, burning his throat and setting his brain ablaze, everything hurting and everything numb all at once. All he can do is pant for breath, never able to inhale as deeply as he needs, his chest tight like a boa constrictor has wrapped itself around his ribcage. Tears pour from his eyes, eyelids swollen and puffy from crying so much. Sobs crack in his burning throat, and nausea churns in his stomach. he feels like shit.

He’s never had a panic attack before, but this must be one of them. He can’t calm down no matter how much he wants to, and terror just overwhelms him, leaving Zoro unable to do anything but hyperventilate and cry. He feels pathetic, weak and pathetic and useless.

But it won’t stop.

Zoro is unable to tell how much time passes in his cell, and it feels like the panic attack has gone on for only a few seconds but also for infinity at the same time. And when he finally starts to calm down, his chest getting looser so he can actually breathe and the alarms of terror start to go away, Zoro has no idea how long it lasted. However long is too long, to be honest.

As he comes down from the panic attack, the reducing fear allows something else to come back: the pain. It hits him all at once; all the lashes on his back and the stab wounds on his limbs and the bruises and the stinging chafing on his genitals and the open gash on his forehead and the burning pain in his throat from screaming and puking and the pounding headache that won’t go away… it all crashes into him at the same time, and Zoro yelps.

But worst of all is his arm. His broken bones scream with pain, shattered shards of bone scraping against each other and prodding at his skin, creating distorted bumps across his swollen, bruised skin. His wrist hurts even more, so swollen from all the tiny bones being crushed that the cuff around it now feels far too tight, metal gouging into his swollen, bruised flesh. Now even moving his shoulder is enough to send pain shooting down his arm, and he nearly pukes if he twitches his fingers.

Everything hurts so much, and Zoro wants to throw up. But he doesn’t, getting left with churning, aching nausea in his empty stomach, churning so loudly he can hear it even over his pounding heart.

And even as the panic fades, Zoro is left with the horrific pain and the fear that still settles in his chest. This seems to be the new normal for him, a kind of baseline level of terror that is always there, eating away at him. And, most infuriatingly of all, the tears won’t stop falling.

Zoro hates crying; he tries his best to never cry, but if he has to, it is always in private, away from the eyes of others. He knows it’s old-fashioned and kind of pathetic, but… he has always seen crying as weak. So whenever he cries, it’s like proof that he is a weakling.

A weakling who just cries and cries, his dehydration getting worse with every tear that dribbles down his bloodstained cheeks.

\---

The tears are still falling when Zoro hears footsteps in the distance, and he grits his jaw, longing to wipe his face to hide it. If there is anyone he wants to hide his tears from, it’s these three bastards. But he can’t stop it, and when the door swings open, the three captors get a clear look at the tears that stream down his face, creating pink trails as they mix with the dry blood on his cheeks, and the snot that smears across his lips and chin.

And, just as he expected, they all start howling with laughter.

“Fuck, what do you look like?” the leader says, snorting with laughter.

His two subordinates cling to each other as they laugh, lost in the hilarity of watching a grown man, a critically injured person getting close to death, sobbing in front of them. They really are evil pieces of shit.

“Wow, you’re pathetic.”

“Grow a pair, Roronoa.”

“Aww, is poor little Roronoa upset?”

The taunting, teasing tones of their voices crowd around him, and Zoro grits his teeth harder, jaw trembling. He knows reacting will get him injured, but it gets harder and harder to just ignore their laughter at his plight.

Eventually, he has had enough. Zoro glares at them all, and, in a voice that sounds far more congested and shaky than he wanted, he mutters, “Fuck you.”

The three captors stop laughing, and stare at him. The leader sighs, shaking his head.

“Will you ever learn?” he says, taking out his knife.

For a second, he just studies the blade, still covered in dry blood (Zoro’s blood), but then looks at Zoro and grins. And then he drives the tip of the knife straight into Zoro’s broken arm.

Zoro screams, unable to hold back the cry of agony. The blade gouges into his swollen, bruised skin, blood dribbling around the edges of the knife. As Zoro trembles from the pain, the leader presses the blade in further, slicing his flesh and pushing the tip against a broken fragment of his bone, making it rub against another and sending nerve pain shooting up his arm.

When he finally pulls it out, blood spills from the wound, and Zoro lets out a small yelp. He gasps for breath, wanting to throw up. But, again, the nausea just churns and churns, and Zoro swallows hard.

“Well, it’s nice to know you’ve learned not to answer back to us, Roronoa,” the leader says, wiping the bloody blade against the filthy tatters of Zoro’s shirt. “Hardly a model prisoner.”

Zoro glares at him, blood dripping from his arm and splattering the damp stone floor.

“Anyway, we just came to say goodbye,” he continues, smirking. “We’re leaving now. Enjoy the few days you’ve got left before you die. Oh, and nobody will ever find you here. But if someone does happen to stumble across this place, you’ll be long dead by then.”

Zoro pants for breath. “Why don’t you… just kill me?”

“Good question. The answer: that’d be too good for you. A slow death is the best for a pirate hunting piece of shit like you, Roronoa Zoro. So… bye!”

And the three captors leave the cell without looking back, locking the door behind them.

\---

Luffy lies on his back on the deck, staring up at the sky. His eyes track the clouds, but he’s not really looking at them. To be honest, all he can focus on his Zoro, and how he longs to find his partner. Nami said he might be at this abandoned pirate base, and Luffy just has to beg and hope and pray that they find him. He needs Zoro.

“Hey, Luffy?” Nami calls, and he sits up.

She stands at the ship’s wheel, and grins at him. After the events of this past week or so, it’s so rare to see a real smile on Nami’s face.

“What’s up?” he says, getting to his feet (and ignoring the slight bout of vertigo that makes the world spin, standing his ground lest he fall over) and wandering over. “You look happy.”

“Yeah, well…” Nami glances down at her chart. “If we stay on course, I think we’ll be there in three hours. Just thought you should know.”

Luffy lets her words sink in, well aware he finds it harder to process things when he’s tired and stressed. And when what she said registered, he grins. “Really?”

Nami nods. “Yeah.”

“That’s – that’s awesome!” he cries, and he flings his arms around Nami, pulling her into a hug.

Nami stumbles backwards at the weight of Luffy crashing against her, but wraps her arms around him, pulling him closer. Happiness bubbles up inside of him, and Luffy lets out a shrill giggle. Before long, he’s howling with laughter, clinging to Nami as thought he’ll fall over if she lets go.

Of course, deep down, he knows the chances of finding Zoro at this place are slim. And Nami must know it too. But he forces those thoughts to go away and just… just laughs, longing for his optimism to pay off for once.

“What’s with the noise out here?” Sanji asks, wandering out of the bunkroom, half asleep. “Is Luffy on drugs?”

“No, just excited,” Nami says, managing to prise herself free of Luffy’s grip and take a few steps backwards.

He continues to giggle, starting to flap his hands now they are free, and it’s like he’s letting out all of that tense, toxic energy through his laughter. He must look ridiculous, but he doesn’t care.

“We’re getting close to that base,” Nami explains, and Sanji nods.

“Oh, I get it,” he says. Sanji must be thinking it too, but he doesn’t say it.

None of them say it.

It’s almost like if nobody says it, then it won’t happen. If nobody points out how slim the chances are, they might find Zoro.

Usopp trails out of the bunkroom, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “Um… what the hell?”

“Oh, Usopp!” Luffy cries, hurtling towards Usopp and tackling him into a hug, still laughing so hard it becomes harder to breathe.

“Whoa, what the…?”

“We’re close to the base, Usopp! We might find Zoro this time! Isn’t that amazing?!”

For a moment, Usopp just stands there. Then he hugs Luffy back, grins and says, “Yeah, amazing!”

And Nami and Sanji just glance at the hysterical pair, smiling fondly.

\---

He is alone.

Well, he was always alone in this cell, a locked door separating him from the outside world. But his captors were always nearby, ready to come in and torture him, and he often heard them shouting and breaking things in the distance.

But now they have left, and he is truly alone.

He doesn’t know how to feel. Obviously, part of Zoro is glad they have gone, because they can’t torture him again. But with them gone, he is going to die. Of course, they said as much before they left, but Zoro hadn’t really taken it in.

He is totally alone, and he is going to die alone.

And in a fucking warped kind of way, a sense of loneliness builds up inside of him. he hates the bastards who did this to him, but at least hearing their voices and occasionally being yelled at was some kind of human contact. And Zoro may struggle with social skills, but he still likes being around people. Being alone is… terrifying.

The tears have stopped, probably from dehydration rather than a calmed emotional state. He still has a lump in his throat, and his eyes burn from all the sobbing. And although he has stopped crying, he still hates himself for crying.

Desperate for some sort of distraction, Zoro pictures his teammates. He thinks of Sanji, of his friend who cooks amazing food and loves to bicker with him. He thinks of Usopp, his partner who loves making ammo for his slingshot and gives amazing hugs. He thinks of Nami, his partner and the incredibly smart woman who can make amazing maps and keeps the ship on track. And he thinks of Luffy, of his captain and the one person in the world he trusts more than any other. He loves them so much.

But as he imagines their smiling faces, memories of what the captors said to him flash through his mind, graphic descriptions of their deaths and their hands. And before he can stop it, his mind fills with graphic, horrific images of their dead bodies, blood and organs staining the deck of the Merry. All he can see is their lifeless corpses, and Zoro lets out a yelp, longing to bang his head until the images go away.

Nausea churns in his guts again, and this time vomit rises in his throat. And as those horrific, terrifying thoughts overwhelm him, his mouth fills with vomit and he throws up, spitting out nothing but stomach acid and spluttering with the agonising effort of dry heaving.

When it’s finally over, Zoro pants for breath, trying to calm himself – but his heart pounds and pounds, and more tears leak from his bloodshot eyes.


	12. Chapter 12

Luffy scales the rigging with clumsy movements, and attempts to hop into the crow’s nest. Instead, he catches his foot on the rigging and falls head first into the crow’s nest, banging his head in the process.

“Ow!” he yelps, wriggling to sit on his butt. He places a hand on his forehead, wincing when his fingers graze the beginnings of a bump.

“You okay up there, Luffy?” Sanji calls.

“Yeah, I’m fine!” he yells back, getting to his feet.

Luffy wobbles slightly, the dizziness from his sleep deprivation still pouncing on him at random moments, and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a spyglass (thankfully not broken in his fall) that Nami normally keeps locked in her cartography chest. He knows her letting people use it is a big thing for her, and he grins.

His hands shaking, Luffy brings the spyglass up to his eye and stares out to sea. Nami said they’ll be there in less than an hour at this speed, and he can’t wait to catch a glimpse of their destination on the horizon.

Zoro might be there! They might find him!

Deep down, the doubt still sits there, but Luffy won’t even let those thoughts surface. He just hopes and hopes and hopes that, this time, Zoro will be there.

Down on the deck, Sanji takes his turn steering the ship. He has one hand on the wheel and a cigarette gripped in the other, which he takes long drags from every few seconds. His nicotine addiction has kept him going through this lack of sleep and fear, but he finds himself needing to chain smoke just to stop himself showing his anxiety.

Under his sleeve, the burn mark stings. Now covered in a white blister, the small, circular burn prickles with every movement of his arm, and Sanji keeps biting back groans. That was the first time he intentionally hurt himself, and he hopes he won’t end up doing it again. no, his coping mechanism, no matter how unhealthy, will always be smoking.

Sanji stubs out the butt and immediately pulls another cigarette out of the box, clenching it between his teeth. He knows it’s just a distraction, but he wants to be distracted. He doesn’t want that overwhelming worry to come back. He needs to stay in control.

By the tangerine orchard, Usopp kneels on the deck, the contents of his shoulder bag spread out in front of him. He stares at his slingshot, eyes counting the ammunition he owns. Usopp grimaces, knowing he has enough to cause serious damage to whoever he fires at.

It might seem paranoid, but… he has to prepare for a fight. The people who took Zoro must be there with him, and they won’t take it well if Luffy and the others stroll up. They will need Usopp’s slingshot skills to take the bastards out before they have a chance to use those gas grenades again.

He just hopes his shaky hands won’t ruin it. They have to get Zoro back.

At the table, Nami stares at her sea chart, chin resting on her elbows as she studies the intricate map she drew years ago. She thinks about all the ports they have visited, how each time the fact they didn’t find Zoro crushed them all (especially Luffy), and she can’t help but worry about their mental health if they don’t find him here, either. How long will they be able to keep going before the constant stress gives them all a breakdown?

Her eyes focus on the pirate base, their destination, and Nami’s stomach clenches. At these bases, pirates are known for keeping prisoners. She’d bet all her Berries that this place as old, old prison cells – and that, if he is here, poor Zoro is locked inside of one of them.

If Zoro is here, what state is he in?

What if he is…?

“Hey, I can see it!” Luffy yells, jumping up and down so fast Nami fears he might fall out of the crow’s nest.

Anticipation and fear knot together until all she really knows is that her heart pounds so hard she can feel it in her neck, and Nami swallows hard.

They’re almost there.

\---

Zoro screws his eyes up, hoping the lack of vision might make the world stop spinning. Unfortunately, his brain still spins in circles inside his skull, and Zoro knows his restraints are the only things keeping him on his feet. Vertigo is a horrible sensation, one which Zoro has become uncomfortably familiar with lately.

When he opens his eyes, the room still lurches and he still feels like his brain is rattling around his skull, Zoro notices the palpitations are back. They’re almost always with him, to the point that not being able to feel his heart drumming in his chest or skipping a beat or pounding in his ears or neck actually feels weird. He wonders if they will ever go away.

As he tries to ignore his heartbeat, Zoro notices a strange sensation in his leg. The horrific stab wound has finally scabbed over, but is still deep and bled so much even his captors thought he would die, and it itches like every other scab on his skin. And he can’t really feel the deep pain of the wound, most likely because the knife damaged his nerves. But he can feel his wound throbbing, blood pounding beneath the scab like he has a second heart. And it’s something Zoro is familiar with; is this the beginnings of an infection?

Oh shit.

He grits his jaw, longing to rip himself free of these restraints and run away. Except, even if he could rip the cuffs from his limbs, his weak, injured legs with atrophied muscles would crumple beneath him.

He just needs to face it: he has been left here to die. Very soon considering the state of his body.

Just like most people, Zoro kind of fears death. The thing is, he could accept his death if he got to say goodbye first and finish what he started, also like a lot of people. But he doesn’t want to die like this.

He doesn’t even know if his crew are alive. Please say they’re safe.

He can just about cope with his own shitty fate, but, please, let them be safe.

\---

As Luffy scrambles down the rigging and Usopp crackles with anticipation, Nami sails the Merry towards the huge mess of rocks and cliffs before them. This place is supposed to be a bay, but as she steers and scans their surroundings, mindful of the choppy waves and jagged rocks, Nami struggles to see it.

“Oh, I see sand!” Usopp yells from right at the front of the ship.

“Awesome!” Luffy says.

Nami turns to port and tries to get a look; as the ship drifts parallel to the rocks, she looks where Usopp points. Through an arch in the cliffs, she spies a bay, the sand a stark contrast to the grey rocks.

Ignoring the babbles of her crewmates, Nami keeps steering, sailing the circumference of the small island (which, she realises, is more like a cluster of huge rocks surrounding a bay, the only entry points being higher than sea level and only small enough for people). Soon, she finds an old, rotten dock, complete with partly-disintegrated ropes scattered across it.

“Cool,” Sanji says. “The only access is on foot. Guess it makes sense; much easier to defend the place from others.”

“But… there are no other ships,” Usopp says, and it hits her.

He’s right. There are no ships at the dock. So that means… either nobody is here, or Zoro’s captors just left him behind.

“Doesn’t matter,” Nami says. “Let’s just drop anchor.”

She pulls the ship as close to the dock as she can, and Sanji and Luffy drop the anchor over the side of the Merry. Usopp lowers the rope latter, and before Nami has a chance to put away her map, Usopp scales down the ladder, Luffy simply jumping off the side of the ship and landing with a thump on the rotting wood.

“Wait!” Sanji says, and they both look up at him, sheepish expressions on their faces. “I know you wanna run in as quick as you can. But we need to be stealthy.”

“He’s right,” Nami says. “Wait for us, and we’ll all go at a slow pace. Besides, it looks like that dock could fall apart any moment.”

Usopp looks down and grimaces. Sanji snorts.

Grabbing her things, Nami awkwardly climbs down the ladder, setting her feet on the dock. The scent of rotten wood is incredibly pungent this close up, and it actually squidgy beneath her. This really has been here for decades, hasn’t it?

Once Sanji has joined them, the four Straw Hats all look at each other. Luffy and Usopp still buzz with anticipation, but their expressions are grave.

“Are we all ready?” Nami asks.

The three guys nod, and she swallows.

“Okay, let’s go.”

With Luffy leading the way and Sanji bringing up the rear, they walk along the dock, and climb a set of slippery stone steps carved out of the cliff. Once they reach the top, Nami finds herself stood in the arch she peered through, and stares down.

Just as she saw, there’s the bay, the sand yellow and covered in debris, and the water grey and choppy. It looks like one huge rip current, and Nami grabs Luffy’s arm.

“Don’t go near the water,” she says.

“I wouldn’t anyway,” he mumbles, grinning. “But, yeah, it looks pretty dodgy.”

The four of them scale the steps on the other side of the cliff, and step onto the sand. Nami tilts her head back, noticing how all the cliffs seem to loom over her, trapping them all in this small space. She’s grateful she isn’t claustrophobic.

They cross the damp sand and find themselves staring up at one of the cliffs. Stone steps are carved into it, and halfway up sits a cave mouth, more rotten wood surrounding it. From what Nami can tell, several small holes are carved out of the rock at that height, and she wonders if they might be crude windows. The rope handrails on the steps has long perished, and it looks like a death trap.

“Careful, guys,” Nami says, and they start to climb.

It’s awkward and fucking dangerous, their shoes slipping on the wet, uneven stone and the salty wind whipping them more the higher they climb. By the time they reach the top, they are at least as high as the crow’s nest is from the deck of the Merry, and the fall would be deadly. Nami shivers despite not being cold, and reaches the top.

They all stand as far back from the edge as they can, studying the cave mouth. It looks like it used to have thick wooden doors across it, but the sea winds have eaten through it over the decades, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the soggy wood. Stacks of old cannonballs are placed in stone crates, and long-broken weapons litter the wet ground. Yeah, this totally used to be a pirate base.

“We’re gonna need some light, guys,” Usopp says, staring into the darkness of the cave. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a large torch. “Ta-da!”

“Okay, let’s go,” Luffy says, still trembling with anticipation but now looking like he wants to throw up, his skin greasy and sallow.

With only the thin beam of light to guide them, they wander into the base. But whilst she knows this place used to be populated, Nami starts to spot signs of more recent use. Cigarette butts and food wrappers litter the ground, and they look pretty fresh. But she keeps quiet.

When they get deeper inside, they reach a fork in the path.

“I think we should split up,” Sanji says.

“Do you have another torch?” Luffy asks Usopp.

He nods. “Yeah, but it’s not as big. Here.”

Luffy takes a much smaller torch, switching it on. “Cool. Thanks. So, do you wanna go with me, Nami?”

She looks at him, smiling. “Sounds good to me.”

And she and Luffy wave to Usopp and Sanji, and walk further into the darkness.

\---

Sanji lights a cigarette, the flame a dim light in the darkness, and glances at Usopp. “Should we carry on?”

Usopp gulps, watching the light of Luffy’s torch fade away. “Uh, yeah, let’s go.”

Following Usopp, Sanji heads to the right of the fork in the path, and all he can hear is their footsteps and Usopp’s jagged breathing. The further they walk, they spot a dim light up ahead, and they pick up their pace.

Soon, they find themselves in a room, the door long gone. Crude windows have been carved out of the walls, lighting the room a decent amount. But he doesn’t really notice that. because all he sees are the cells.

About a dozen cells line the wall, each of them with their rotten doors open and showing a window at the back. The chains on the walls make him shiver, and Usopp whimpers.

Sanji scans the row of cells, flinching when he sees bloodstains on the walls, and then stares. The cell at the far end has its door shut.

Usopp also spots it, his eyes widening. And before Sanji can stop him, he calls, “Hello? Is anyone—?”

“Shut it!” Sanji hisses, clamping a hand over his mouth. “Stealth, remember.”

But as they stand there, Sanji gagging Usopp with his hand, they both hear a noise. From behind the closed door comes a jagged intake of breath, and a weak, tentative whisper of, “Usopp?”

They both stare at each other. Despite how weak and broken it sounded, there can only be one person who just spoke.

“Zoro!” Usopp shrieks, and they hurtle over to the door, Sanji’s ‘stealth’ plan instantly forgotten.

The door is bolted on the outside as well as locked with a large key, but rotten wood like this has no chance against Sanji. With barely any effort, he gives a hard kick, and the door falls off of its hinges.

They both hurtle forwards – and then stop dead.

The scent of piss and vomit hangs in the air, almost enough to make Sanji retch. But he ignores it.

Because he just stares.

Zoro stands there, chained to the wall, covered in blood and vomit, his clothes torn and bloodstained, and horrific injuries littering his body. He looks at the pair of them with weak, bleary eyes, and Usopp breaks down sobbing.

Sanji knows he should do something – anything! – but he can’t move.

Zoro is there, right in front of him.

Zoro is alive.

But Zoro is bloody and beaten and broken, and all of Sanji’s worst fears have come true and stabbed him through the chest.

 _Fucking hell, Zoro,_ he thinks as Usopp sobs and Zoro stares at them like they’re ghosts. _What happened to you?_

But it doesn’t take a genius to answer that one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! The sequel begins immediately after this fic, and will focus on recovery and caring for Zoro.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want me to write you a short fic, drop in a prompt at my [personal prompt meme](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/AutisticWriters_Personal_Prompt_Meme)!


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